Total Charge Changing Cross-Sections of 300 MeV/A Fe26+ Ion Beam in Different Target Media

Abstract

Total charge changing cross-sections of 300 MeV/A Fe26+ ion beam in Al and combined media of CH2, CR39 and Al were calculated by CR39 track etch detectors using an image analysing system; DM6000M optical microscope attached with a personal computer installed with Leica QWin Plus software. The CR39 nuclear track detectors were used to identify the incident charged particles and their fragments. Exposed CR39 detectors were etched in 6N NaOH solution + 1% ethyl alcohol at 70 ˚C to visualize the tracks produced by primary ion beam and its fragmentations under optical microscope. The temperature was kept constant throughout the etching within ± 0.1˚C. The present work shows better response of the CR39 track etch detector up to an improved threshold Z/β ∼ 4.6. The cone-diameter distributions were fitted by multiple Gaussians using ROOT software analysis toolkit. The numbers of incident and survived ions were determined within 99.7% confidence levels. The calculated values of total charge changing cross-section were (1663 ± 236) mb in Al target, (1219 ± 29) mb in combined target CH2+CR39+Al and (1020 ± 121) mb in combined target CH2+CR39.