Proton Calorimetry/Meetings/2023/03/15

Minutes for UCL Proton Calorimetry Meetings, 15th March

Present

Saad Shaikh, Simon Jolly, Sonia Escribano, Maya Maciurzynska

Saad Shaikh

• Delivered update on Geant4 simulation development, slides can be found here.
  • Found a list of values for Gaussian energy straggling to produce curves similar to those measured at UCLH, across clinical energy range.
  • Added detector messenger to allow Birks' constant to be set at runtime.
• Gave presentation on analysis on PARTREC beam test, slides can be found here.
  • Beam quality worsens at lower energies, possibly due to aluminium beam degrader.
  • Appear to have linear scaling of average charge measured with beam current.
  • Fit results do vary with different beam current: effect is more pronounced at lower (worse) energies, best results still have 0.1-0.2 mm difference in range.
  • There is some interplay with Birks' constant and range – worse values of Birks' constant give worse range results.
  • Possibly have 0.8mm systematic offset from reference data, but need more reference data to confirm.
• Programmed flash memory on USB104 board so that device is programmed with DDC232 code on power-up.
  • Updated Raspberry Pi and loaded latest versions of DAQ code: set up works with Sonia's GUI.
• Will start PBT journal club with Sonia to start consolidating research from other groups on scintillators for proton therapy & ionisation quenching.
• Organised first meeting of UCL HEP Climate Change projects and drafted a call for proposals for 4 small funded projects for PhD students.