Study of the performance of the FOOT experiment

Abstract

In the last decade a continuous increase in the numberof cancer patients treated with Particle Therapy (CPT) has been registered. CPTis still a discipline where the contribution coming from research in physicsplays an important role. For example, different studies have shown that inproton therapy nuclear inelastic interactions of the incident beam with thepatient tissues may lead to the fragmentation of the target nuclei producing anon negligible amount of target fragments, which may alter the estimated localdose deposition, especially in the entrance region. On the other hand, in heavyion treatments, the main effect of nuclear inelastic interactions results inthe break up of the incident ion instead of the target nuclei. The producedfragments have a longer range than the projectile, leading to an undesirabledose deposition beyond the Bragg peak. At present there is still a lack ofcomplete and reliable experimental measurements of nuclear reaction crosssections for fragments produced in the interaction with tissues nuclei (H, C,Ca, O, N) of 60-250 MeV protons and 100-400 MeV/u carbon ions, which are thetypical energies adopted in CPT treatments. These data will be important todevelop a new generation of high quality treatment planning systems for CPT. The FOOT (FragmentatiOn Of Target) experiment aims tofill the gap, performing a set of measurements of nuclear fragmentation crosssections relevant for CPT. As far thestudy of target fragmentation is concerned, the FOOT experiment will adopt aninverse kinematic approach to overcome the difficulties related to the shortfragments range (??m). In order to bypass the difficulties to manage apure hydrogen target, it has been chosen a strategy of a double targetseparately made of C and C2H4 and the final cross sectionon Hydrogen will be obtained by subtraction. Further interest in this type ofmeasurements comes from the issue of radioprotection in space missions, wherethe energy to be considered is higher and close to 1 GeV/u. FOOT consists oftwo different setups depending on the detection of heavy and light fragments:the heavy fragments are detected by a high precision tracking system inmagnetic field, a time of flight measurement system and a calorimeter, whilethe lighter ones by a separated emulsion chamber. The optimization and theperformance analysis of the setup have studied by means of the FLUKA(1)(2)(3)Monte Carlo code and different detectors have been tested.In this work, an overview of the FOOT experiment and areport on the study of the detector performances will be presented.