Dear fluka experts,
I would like to simulate proton-boron reactions occurring in a pre-ionized boron target. I was wondering if there is a method to do that or somehow manually adjust the electronic stopping power of the material?
Best regards,
Steven.
Dear Steven,
I assume you want a target material that’s a plasma, in which case general-purpose MC codes like FLUKA (which assume neutral materials) may struggle to be quantitative, so one cannot use them out of the box.
I suspect that a whole host of charged-particle transport properties will be different than in neutral materials. Not just the stopping power, but also other interaction mechanisms modeled on the assumption of a neutral atom: elastic scattering (if the atom is not neutral the nuclear charge is not fully screened and deflections in the dominant small-scattering-angle regime should differ), Bremsstrahlung, etc. My experience with plasma physics is limited, so i cannot extrapolate further beyond these qualitative lines.
While the p+B nuclear interaction itself will be all right, the transport of the proton to the interaction point (and of charged secondaries) in the plasma will not necessarily be appropriately modelled.
Cesc