Double-differential fragmentation cross-section measurements of 95 MeV/nucleon 12C beams on thin targets for hadron therapy.

During therapeutic treatment with heavy ions like carbon, the beam undergoes nuclear fragmentation and secondary light charged particles, in particular protons and a particles, are produced. To estimate the dose deposited into the tumors and the surrounding healthy tissues, an accurate prediction on the fluences of these secondary fragments is necessary. Nowadays, a very limited set of double differential carbon fragmentation cross sections are being measured in the energy range used in hadron therapy (40 to 400 MeV/nucleon). Therefore, new measurements are performed to determine the double differential cross section of carbon on different thin targets. This work describes the experimental results of an experiment performed on May 2011 at GANIL. The double differential cross sections and the angular distributions of secondary fragments produced in the 12C fragmentation at 95 MeV/nucleon on thin targets (C, CH2, Al, Al2O3, Ti, and PMMA) have been measured. The experimental setup will be precisely described, the systematic error study will be explained and all the experimental data will be presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]