General Degradation Scheme of Radiation Energy in Solids

We begin this section with a general survey of the principal modes of interaction between matter and radiation. This will allow an evaluation of the repartition of the absorbed energy for each particular type of effect. Only those radiations most frequently used in radiation chemistry are considered here and therefore we limit ourselves to radiation of energy smaller than a few million electron volts. 

Thus we shall be interested with the following types of radiation gamma rays, beta rays, protons, deutons, alphas, fission fragments, and fast neutrons. 

The following scheme illustrates the various interaction possibilities between radiation and matter  

It is not our purpose to make a detailed study of nuclear reactions. Such reactions indeed are only induced to an appreciable extent by very high energy radiation (5 M.e.v.) and by thermal neutrons these two cases are not considered here. However, gamma radiation consecutive to radiative capture as well as beta, alpha, and other radiations resulting from other nuclear reactions will be studied here. Moreover, allowance has to be made 

A relatively simple description of the energy decay process of the incident photon is possible if the following approximation is made for a given element the Compton effect alone is assumed to account for the phenomenon 

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III. General Degradation Scheme of Radiation Energy in Solids. 80... 

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