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Home  ⪧  Research  ⪧  Nuclear Physics  ⪧  FOOT

FOOT

In particle therapy, the nuclear interactions of the beam nuclei with the patient tissues can induce the fragmentation of projectiles and/or target nuclei and needs to be carefully taken into account when planning the treatment. In proton therapy treatments the target fragmentation produces low energy, short range fragments along all the beam path, that deposit a non-negligible dose especially in the first crossed tissues. On the other hand, in treatments performed using ¹²C, or other (⁴He or ¹⁶O) ions of interest, the main concern is related to the production of long range fragments that can release their dose in the healthy tissues beyond the Bragg peak.

Understanding nuclear fragmentation processes is of interest also for radiation protection in human space flight applications, in view of deep space missions. In particular ⁴He and high-energy charged particles, mainly ¹²C, ¹⁶O, ²⁸Si and ⁵⁶Fe, provide the main source of absorbed dose in astronauts outside the atmosphere. The nuclear fragmentation properties of the materials used to build the spacecrafts need to be known with high accuracy in order to optimise the shielding against the space radiation.

The study of the impact of these processes, which is of interest both for PT and space radioprotection applications, suffers at present from the limited experimental precision achieved on the relevant nuclear cross sections that compromise the reliability of the available computational models. The FOOT (FragmentatiOn Of Target) experiment aims to study these nuclear processes and measure the corresponding fragmentation cross sections dσ/dE for the production of different (Z,A) fragments (and d2σ/dEdϑ for ϑ<10° in laboratory system) with 2 complementary systems: a setup that implements a magnetic spectrometer, coupled with detectors for tracking and detectors optimized for the identification of fragments heavier than ⁴He, and a further setup based on emulsions spectrometer, optimised for low Z fragments.

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Websites:

• FOOT International

Thesis Opportunities:

• Studies of nuclear fragmentation induced in graphite and polyethylene targets by ion beams used in particle therapy (He, C, O).

For information, please contact: Vincenzo Patera and Michela Marafini.

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Local Coordinator

Michela Marafini

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