Numerical calculation of energy deposition by broad high-energy electron beams

Abstract

The feasibility is demonstrated of a numerical method to calculate dose deposition by broad high-energy electron beams in homogeneous matter or in heterogeneous matter in which the heterogeneities are arranged in slabs perpendicular to the beam axis. The method is based only on the basic physical interaction processes of high-energy electrons and matter. The method is an extended version of the phase space time evolution method as described by Cordaro and Zucker (1971). The calculated depth-dose curves, energy spectra and angular distributions agree very well with results of the extensive class II Monte Carlo calculations of Andreo and Brahme (1984) and Andreo (1985), but require much less computer time: typically three minutes on a VAX 785 with floating point accelerator. This demonstrates the power of a numerical method in comparison with Monte Carlo methods.