Theory of the ionization cascade

✍ Scribed by J.E. Moyal

• Book ID: 104158561
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1956
• Weight: 607 KB
• Volume: 1
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0029-5582
• DOI: 10.1016/s0029-5582(56)80025-4

✦ Synopsis

The statistical problem connected with the ionization cascade, that is, the cascade of knock-on electrons produced by a fast primary particle passing through matter, is to obtain the distribution of quantities of interest connected with the cascade, such as the number of electrons in a given energy range, given the ionization cross-sections. An exact solution of this problem is given in very general terms, which will yield all such distributions. With the help of suitable approximations, the distributions of (1) the number of fast knock-on electrons of energy > given value W, and (2) the total number of ion-pairs produced by the primary particle, are obtained in a form suitable for numerical computation.