Ionizing Bremsstrahlung

Neutrons - neutrons are emitted during nuclear fission and have very great penetrating powers. They can cause intense ionization. Bremsstrahlung - electromagnetic radiations produced by the slowing down of a p particle. They can have considerable penetrating powers. 

A consequence of absorption of X rays is the inner shell ionization of the absorbing atoms and the subsequent generation of characteristic X rays from the absorbing atoms, called secondary fluorescence, which raises the generated intensity over that produced by the direct action of the beam electrons. Secondary fluorescence can be induced by both characteristic and bremsstrahlung X rays. Both effects are compo-sitionally dependent. 

Radiation, Secondary—A particle or ray that is produced when the primary radiation interacts with a material, and which has sufficient energy to produce its own ionization, such as bremsstrahlung or electrons knocked from atomic orbitals with enough energy to then produce ionization (see Delta Rays). 

The intra-cluster gas in clusters of galaxies is generally hotter and in collisional ionization equilibrium, and the continuum is dominated by bremsstrahlung, making the interpretation of at least the hydrogen-like and helium-like K-shell emission lines relatively straightforward, but they are comparatively weak and an accurate determination of the temperature(s) is critical. 

The most direct and easy way consists in focusing the laser pulse onto a solid target and to collect the radiation emitted by the produced plasma. The wide emitted spectrum extends from infrared to X-rays and it is produced by different physical mechanisms Bremsstrahlung, recombination, resonant lines, K-shell emission from neutral (or partially ionized) atoms. In particular, this latter mechanism has been recognized, since a decade, as a way of producing ultrashort monochromatic radiation pulses at energy up to several keV. 

The interaction of an electron with an atom gives rise to two types of X-rays characteristic emission lines and bremsstrahlung. The atom emits element-characteristic X-rays when the incident electron ejects a bound electron from an atomic orbital. The core-ionized atom is highly unstable and has two possibilities for decay X-ray fluorescence and Auger decay. The first is the basis for electron microprobe analysis, and the second is the basis of Auger electron spectroscopy, discussed in Chapter 3. 

But bremsstrahlung must also be considered as a part of the background spectrum.17 The main ionization processes of an analyte (M) in argon inductively coupled plasma are ... 

Let us first mention that only a very small fraction of the proton, deuton, and alpha energy is dissipated as bremsstrahlung 47). The processes that will account for energy dissipation are thus essentially atom displacements and ionization and excitation phenomena. 

At complete ionization of the hydrogen (e.g. when added to a plasma with another gas as the main constituent) ne = p/(2 x k x Te) has a maximum at a wavelength of X — (7.2 x 107)/Te or at a fixed wavelength, the maximum intensity is found at a temperature Te = (5.76 x 107)/2. Thus, the electron temperature can be determined from the wavelength dependence of the continuum intensity. As Te is the electron temperature, absolute measurements of the background continuum emission in a plasma, e.g. for the case of hydrogen, allow determination of the electron temperature in a plasma, irrespective of whether it is in local thermal equilibrium or not. Similar methods also make use of the recombination continuum and of the ratio of the Bremsstrahlung and the recombination continuum. 

Whereas the rotational and the gas temperature are particularly relevant to the evaporation processes in the plasma, the electron temperature, being a measure of the kinetic energy of the electrons, is relevant to the study of excitation and ionization by collisions with electrons. This is an important process for generation of the analyte signal both in optical atomic emission and in mass spectrometry. The electron temperature can be determined from the intensity of the recombination continuum or of the Bremsstrahlung , as described by Eq. (57). 

X-Ray Emission [1.6-1.8]. A typical X-ray emission spectrum from a W target X-ray tube at 50 kV is shown in Fig. 1.1. It consists of a continuous X-ray spectrum, or white radiation ( Bremsstrahlung ), on which are superposed a few characteristic lines (L lines), resulting fit>m the direct ionization by the impinging electrons. Table 1.3 shows the strongest characteristic lines of the extended X-ray spectrum. For more details and the O spectra, the reader is referred elsewhere [1.1]. 

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