Speaker
Description
The FOOT (FragmentatiOn Of Target) collaboration aims at improving cancer treatments in particle therapy and optimizing passive countermeasures in space radioprotection by studying the interaction of typical beams with reference targets. On the one hand, particle therapy employs proton and carbon beams to deliver a uniform dose in the tumor region, minimizing the damage to the surrounding healthy tissues. On the other hand, space radioprotection deals with the dose delivered to the astronauts by the space radiation field interacting with any material composing the spacecraft. In both cases, the interaction of the beam with the patient body or the shielding materials lead to nuclear fragmentation with significative neutrons production. Therefore, the characterization of both neutral and charged secondary particles produced in the nuclear beam-target interactions has to be considered both in the plan of an effective and safe medical treatment and in the risk assessment of a long-lasting interplanetary mission (i.e., Mars human exploration). Specifically, the most missing information is about neutrons production, for instance data in the literature are scarce and reported with few details. As a matter of fact, neutrons are an unavoidable drawback of hadron therapy and they have been suggested by NASA and other space agencies to have a dominant role in the potential restriction of boundaries of space exploration.
So far, the FOOT experiment has focused on the characterization of the charged fragments production and the measurement with 5% accuracy of the nuclear fragmentation cross sections interesting in tumor therapy and space radioprotection. However, the future perspective of the FOOT collaboration is to start several experimental campaigns devoted to the evaluation of neutron-production cross sections relevant in the same fields. The feasibility of these experiments relies upon the availability of neutron detectors with particle discrimination capability, and able to operate in an experimental environment highly contaminated by the presence of background, like a liquid scintillator for instance. The telescope system achieved by coupling such detector with a thin plastic scintillator will ensure the discrimination between charged and neutral particles.
In this contribution, I will present the possible upgrades of the FOOT experiment to extend the research focus on neutron production, as well as the preliminary results of measurements performed at GSI (Germany).
