Proton Calorimetry/Meetings/2023/03/15

Minutes for UCL Proton Calorimetry Meetings, 15th March

Saad Shaikh, Simon Jolly, Sonia Escribano, Maya Maciurzynska

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.