Abstract
Several authors, namely Auxier (1968) and McGregor and Allen (1986), have convincingly suggested, on physical grounds, that for proton energies below 15 keV the average energy required to produce an ion pair in aqueous media approaches infinity. Physical theory and some experimental data indicate that the charge state of the proton is so close to zero that nearly all energy transfer is in the form of molecular excitations (Janni, 1982). Ziegler (1985) has also provided data on range energy relationships and stopping power for low energy protons. These latter estimates use codes in which the effective charge on the proton, Z*, is assumed to be 1.0, so no additional light is shed by the Ziegler table on the physical basis for deducing the biological effectiveness of protons below 15 keV. It is our objective to review both the physical background and to compare theory with experiment to estimate the relative biological effectiveness of low energy protons by examining the literature on biological effects of very low energy protons and to make comparisons with the physical data. At the same time, since we were convinced that a careful analysis of late effects RBEs for recoil protons in the energy range 10 keV to 100 keV had not been previously done, this task would also be undertaken.
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Alpen, E.L., Frankel, K.A. (1993). Biological Effectiveness of Recoil Protons from Neutrons of Energy 5 keV to 5 MeV. In: Soloway, A.H., Barth, R.F., Carpenter, D.E. (eds) Advances in Neutron Capture Therapy. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2978-1_40
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-2978-1_40
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