Dechanneling of MeV protons in tungsten

Abstract

A systematic investigation of the dechanneling of protons in tungsten has been completed for the axial direction and also for the (110) plane. Measurements at room temperature have been made at energies of 0.5, 2.0, 3.5, 8.0 and 12.0 MeV; at 2.0 MeV, the effect of target temperature has been investigated over the range 77–873°K. In the axial case, the dechanneling rate increases strongly with the vibrational amplitude _ρ, but not as strongly as the ρ² dependence reported by the Catania group (Refs. 4–7) for silicon and germanium. Also, unlike silicon and germanium, the tungsten axial data exhibit practically no energy dependence and so cannot be fitted by the zρ²/E scaling parameter suggested by the Catania group. On the other hand, the planar dechanneling data in tungsten exhibit the predicted (E ⁻¹)dependence and relatively littie temperature dependence, in good agreement with previous work.