Simulation of positron and electron elastic mean free path and diffusion angle on DNA nucleobases from 10 eV to 100 keV

Abstract

Positron and electron interaction collisions in living cells are efficiently simulated by Monte Carlo (MC) codes where huge data tables are needed. Present study provides detailed results of charged particles elastic interactions needed in MC on DNA nucleobases (adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine, deoxyribose, and phosphoric acid). Indeed, electron and positron elastic cross sections, elastic mean free paths, and elastic angular distributions P(θ) are calculated from 10 eV to 100 keV using a corrected form of the independent atom method taking into account the geometry of the biomolecule. Our calculated results are compared with theoretical data available in the literature in absence of experimental data, in particular for positron. Moreover, our numerical results are presented in analytic format modeled to be used for fast sampling in the MC simulation of elastic collisions; particularly, we provide a useful analytic expression for sampling the elastic diffusion angle. For positron collisions on adenine, the relative error between numerical and analytic elastic diffusion angles is not exceeding 2% in the energy full range 10 eV to 100 keV.