Estimation of energy and angle of incident protons from three-dimensional track profiles on CR-39 detectors

Abstract

The aim of this study was to establish a new method for estimating the energy and angle of incident protons based on the three-dimensional profile of nuclear tracks. An inverse growth approach was developed to obtain the latent track from the etched track pit. The energy and angle of the incident protons can be estimated by determining the critical point (end point of the particle trajectory). The estimated incident energies and angles were in good agreement with the pre-set values for the simulated and experimental data. Compared with the pre-set values, the deviation of the energies and angles for 1–3 MeV protons were within ±0.3 MeV and ±5.0°, respectively. This study provides a valuable reference for extracting energy and angle information from 3-D profiles of a nuclear track, and is expected to be beneficial in reconstruction of energy spectra.