A nanosecond pulse radiolysis study of the hydrated electron with high energy carbon ions

Abstract

The radiolysis yields in pure water were determined using nanosecond pulse radiolysis using high linear energy transfer (LET) particles (1 ns pulses of high energy 1 GeV carbon ion beam). The main characteristics of this experiment were the nanosecond time resolution with heavy ion beam and the single value of LET along the ion track: 27 eV/nm. The kHz repetition rate of the pulsed beam used to reach a good signal-to-noise ratio in these experiments required the development of an acquisition method and a mathematical treatment of a DPO screen. The measured radiolytic yield for the hydrated electron at the nanosecond scale is quite high at 4.5×10 −7 mol/J. A comparison of the experimental results obtained with a Monte Carlo simulation shows a rather good agreement at this LET value. To a certain extent this will allow a better adjustment of the Monte Carlo code.