Abstract
The pion resonance in the nuclear reaction cross section is seen to have a direct impact on the single-event effect (SEE) cross section of modern electronic devices. This was experimentally observed for single-event upsets and single-event latchup. Rectangular parallelepiped (RPP) models built to fit proton data confirm the existence of the pion SEE cross-section resonance. The impact on current radiation hardness assurance (RHA) soft error rate (SER) predictions is, however, minimal for the accelerator environment since this is dominated by high neutron fluxes. The resonance is not seen to have a major impact on the high-energy hadron equivalence approximation established for testing in mixed-field facilities.
Highlights
A LIKE protons and neutrons, pions can interact with silicon nuclei by inelastic collisions
The experimental investigation focuses on static random access memories (SRAMs) since these memories are widely used for the detection of radiation levels in the CERN large hadron collider (LHC) accelerator complex [13], as well as, in actual accelerator equipment designs exposed to radiation [14]
Four of these six memories were characterized against their single-event upsets (SEUs) response, whereas the other two were known to have a relatively high single-event latchups (SELs) proton cross section that could be relevant for the limited pion flux available
Summary
A LIKE protons and neutrons, pions can interact with silicon nuclei by inelastic collisions. The potentially higher SER from pions is due to the resonance in the inelastic collision reaction cross section in the 100–250-MeV energy region [1]. Even when pion fluxes are important, the standard radiation hardness assurance (RHA) approach is to assume that pion SEE cross sections are identical to those of protons and neutrons at energies above 20 MeV. For this reason, the 200-MeV proton data point is commonly used to predict the mixed-field SER in the accelerator [5]. The impact on the high-energy hadron (HEH) equivalence [3] for mixedfield SER predictions is reassessed
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