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Radiochromic film spectroscopy of laser-accelerated proton beams using the FLUKA code and dosimetry traceable to primary standards

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2011

D. Kirby ,
S. Green ,
F. Fiorini ,
D. Parker ,
L. Romagnani ,
D. Doria ,
S. Kar ,
C. Lewis ,
M. Borghesi  and
H. Palmans
D. Kirby*
Affiliation:
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
S. Green
Affiliation:
Dept of Medical Physics, University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust, Birmingham, United Kingdom
F. Fiorini
Affiliation:
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
D. Parker
Affiliation:
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
L. Romagnani
Affiliation:
Centre for Plasma Physics, The Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast, United Kingdom LULI, Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS, CEA, UPMC, Palaiseau, France
D. Doria
Affiliation:
Centre for Plasma Physics, The Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast, United Kingdom
S. Kar
Affiliation:
Centre for Plasma Physics, The Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast, United Kingdom
C. Lewis
Affiliation:
Centre for Plasma Physics, The Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast, United Kingdom
M. Borghesi
Affiliation:
Centre for Plasma Physics, The Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast, United Kingdom
H. Palmans
Affiliation:
National Physical Laboratory, Acoustics and Ionizing Radiation, Teddington, United Kingdom
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Daniel Kirby, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom. E-mail: djk191@bham.ac.uk
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Abstract

A new approach to spectroscopy of laser induced proton beams using radiochromic film (RCF) is presented. This approach allows primary standards of absorbed dose-to-water as used in radiotherapy to be transferred to the calibration of GafChromic HD-810 and EBT in a 29 MeV proton beam from the Birmingham cyclotron. These films were then irradiated in a common stack configuration using the TARANIS Nd:Glass multi-terawatt laser at Queens University Belfast, which can accelerate protons to 10–12 MeV, and a depth-dose curve was measured from a collimated beam. Previous work characterizing the relative effectiveness (RE) of GafChromic film as a function of energy was implemented into Monte Carlo depth-dose curves using FLUKA. A Bragg peak (BP) “library” for proton energies 0–15 MeV was generated, both with and without the RE function. These depth-response curves were iteratively summed in a FORTRAN routine to solve for the measured RCF depth-dose using a simple direct search algorithm. By comparing resultant spectra with both BP libraries, it was found that the effect of including the RE function accounted for an increase in the total number of protons by about 50%. To account for the energy loss due to a 20 µm aluminum filter in front of the film stack, FLUKA was used to create a matrix containing the energy loss transformations for each individual energy bin. Multiplication by the pseudo-inverse of this matrix resulted in “up-shifting” protons to higher energies. Applying this correction to two laser shots gave further increases in the total number of protons, N of 31% and 56%. Failure to consider the relative response of RCF to lower proton energies and neglecting energy losses in a stack filter foil can potentially lead to significant underestimates of the total number of protons in RCF spectroscopy of the low energy protons produced by laser ablation of thin targets.

Keywords

FLUKA codeGafChromic filmLinear energy transferOptical densityRadiochromic film spectroscopyThin metallic targets
Type
Research Article
Information
Laser and Particle Beams , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , June 2011 , pp. 231 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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