Secondary Light Particle Data Base Development Using a Thermodynamic Coalescence Model

ABSTRACT

As heavy ions are transported through shielding and interact with shielding materials accurate values of total, elastic scattering, reactions cross sections and angular distributions of the emitted nucleons, light high energy particles such as deuteron, triton, helion, alpha particles and other heavy ions are required in order to design appropriate and adequate shielding to protect the human crews and instruments from ionizing radiations during long duration space missions. Double-differential (energy and angle) light energetic particle production cross sections must be known for ion energies from tens of MeV/nucleon to tens of GeV/nucleon for all emitted light energetic particles for space radiation protection studies. A coalescence thermodynamics model is used to estimate the coalescence radii and emitting source radii for both symmetric and asymmetric systems of heave ion collisions in order to evaluate emitted light particle double differential cross sections.