Kinetic energy of secondary fragments of 12C at varying incident energies in different biological media – A Monte Carlo study

Abstract

Abstract This is a Monte Carlo study in GATE V8.0 investigating the nuclear fragmentation when 12C beams were incident at varying energies on different biological media. The researchers used one million monoenergetic pencil beam primary carbons irradiated to water, adipose tissue, skeletal muscle and cortical bone phantoms. The target was a box with dimensions of 20 cm × 20 cm × 20 cm to approximate the size of a human head. The energy was varied at 186.7 MeV/u, 241.7 MeV/u and 308.3 MeV/u. We obtained the number of the secondary particles produced in the fragmentation. We then chose the ten most abundant fragments and determined their kinetic energy distributions. 12C was most abundant in the fragmentation followed by proton. Either 3He or 11B had the least entries. The kinetic energy was inversely proportional to particles atomic number. In most cases proton and deuteron had the largest kinetic energy. The number of secondary particles increased with increasing incident energy. The kinetic energy had maximum increase at the stopping range, whose depth varied directly with incident energy and inversely with density of each material. The results were in agreement with the Bethe-Bloch formula.