Publications

The energy spectrum of a H{sup +} beam generated within the HERMES III accelerator is calculated from dosimetry data to refine future experiments. Multiple layers of radiochromic film are exposed to the beam. A graphic user interface was written in MATLAB to align the film images and calculate the beam's dose depth profile. Singular value regularization is used to stabilize the unfolding and provide the H{sup +} beam's energy spectrum. The beam was found to have major contributions from 1 MeV and 8.5 MeV protons. The HERMES III accelerator is typically used as a pulsed photon source to experimentally obtain photon impulse response of systems due to high energy photons. A series of experiments were performed to explore the use of Hermes III to generate an intense pulsed proton beam. Knowing the beam energy spectrum allows for greater precision in experiment predictions and beam model verification.

The objective is to deconvolve radiochromic film data into ion energy spectrum. The purpose is to: (1) Experiment - Utilize HERMES III as a pulsed neutron source; and (2) Unfolding - Ion energy spectrum gives insight into when the H{sup +} ions form and Spectrum is needed to predict neutron production. Conclusions are: (1) the majority of ions are high energy, therefore they form during the main beam pulse; (2) image processing worked; and (3) unfolding proved to be relatively stable.