Relation between absorbed dose, charged particle equilibrium and nuclear transformations: a non-equilibrium thermodynamics point of view

Abstract

We present a discussion to show that the absorbed dose D is a time-dependent function. This time dependence is demonstrated based on the concepts of charged particle equilibrium and on radiation equilibrium within the context of thermodynamic non-equilibrium. In the latter, the time dependence is due to changes of the rest mass energy of the nuclei and elementary particles involved in the terms summation operator Q and Q that appear in the definitions of energy imparted epsilon and energy deposit epsilon(i), respectively. In fact, nothing is said about the averaging operation of the non-stochastic quantity mean energy imparted epsilon, which is used in the definition of D according to ICRU 60. It is shown in this research that the averaging operation necessary to define the epsilon employed to get D cannot be performed with an equilibrium statistical operator rho(r) as could be expected. Rather, the operation has to be defined with a time-dependent non-equilibrium statistical operator rho(r, t); therefore, D is a time-dependent function D(r,t).