Effective generation of the spread-out-Bragg peak from the laser accelerated proton beams using a carbon-proton mixed target.

Abstract

Conventional laser accelerated proton beam has broad energy spectra. It is not suitable for clinical use directly, so it is necessary for employing energy selection system. However, in the conventional laser accelerated proton system, the intensity of the proton beams in the low energy regime is higher than that in the high energy regime. Thus, to generate spread-out-Bragg peak (SOBP), stronger weighting value to the higher energy proton beams is needed and weaker weighting value to the lower energy proton beams is needed, which results in the wide range of weighting values. The purpose of this research is to investigate a method for efficient generating of the SOBP with varying magnetic field in the energy selection system using a carbon-proton mixture target. Energy spectrum of the laser accelerated proton beams was acquired using Particle-In-Cell simulations. The Geant4 Monte Carlo simulation toolkit was implemented for energy selection, particle transportation, and dosimetric property measurement. The energy selection collimator hole size of the energy selection system was changed from 1 to 5mm in order to investigate the effect of hole size on the dosimetric properties for Bragg peak and SOBP. To generate SOBP, magnetic field in the energy selection system was changed during beam irradiation with each beam weighting factor. In this study, our results suggest that carbon-proton mixture target based laser accelerated proton beams can generate quasi-monoenergetic energy distribution and result in the efficient generation of SOBP. A further research is needed to optimize SOBP according to each range and modulated width using an optimized weighting algorithm.