I’ve built a model where I run monoenergetic electron beam at a chunk of some element and score photon spectra traversing the surface. Idea is to make assignments for students to practice element identification from a characteristic spectrum graph. However, only 23 elements are available for ASSIGNMA. So, I just wanted to check, if I add other elements via MATERIAL, is it possible to define appropriate electron (K,L,M,…) levels? I don’t mind doing this work, but just wanted to check for any prior work. Any examples how to define electron levels?
Please note that there are 23 pre-definedsingle-element materials (in addition to the BLCKHOLE and VACUUM) and 12 pre-definedcompounds.
This however is not meant to be an exhaustive offer. You are indeed free to define any material you need, as per these FLUKA training slides.
In doing so, you are not meant to define shell energies: the code does that for you.
Note that in FLUKA you will not get fluorescence photons from inner-shell ionization by direct e- impact. You’ll have the e- emitting Bremsstrahlung photons, the latter undergoing photoelectric effect (maybe a Compton event here or there), leaving an inner shell vacancy, which then relaxes via fluorescence-photon or Auger-electron emission. You may expect a slight underestimation of characteristic gamma lines in your photon spectrum.
While in FLUKA you’ll produce inner-shell vacancies in all available shells via the mechanism in the foregoing point, you will see fluorescence photons and Auger electrons from the relaxation of vacancies in the K and L shells; vacancies in less bound atomic shells relax exclusively by Auger-electron emission.
first of all, I’m embarrassed that I didn’t run into Materials Tab in Flair, things are much more obvious now. Regarding the physics of the situation, lack of direct e-e- ionization is quite interesting, but its quite irrelevant for my purpose: either way I’d get some nice K and L lines, even with relative intensities are somewhat off, which is enough for my students to learn about unit conversion and element identification. However, if I’d insist on getting direct ionization right with low energy electrons, PENELOPE or EGS would probably make more sense in that regard?
If for pedagogical purposes you just want to show K and L lines (on top of the Bremsstrahlung continuum), FLUKA should indeed be enough. Incidentally, students may greatly benefit from the comfort of Flair as a one-stop shop for the full FLUKA simulation pipeline (geometry definition, setting the input file, running the simulation, processing output files, and plotting results) at the mere expense of a few (thoughtful) clicks.
If instead you were to insist in being highly quantitative at the level of inner-shell ionization by direct e- impact, you’d indeed need to look for a more niche tool like PENELOPE (or other codes).