A comparison of the measured responses of a tissue-equivalent proportional counter to high energy heavy (HZE) particles and those simulated using the Geant4 Monte Carlo code.

Monte Carlo simulations of heavy ion interactions using the Geant4 toolkit were compared with measurements of energy deposition in a spherical tissue-equivalent proportional counter (TEPC). A spherical cavity with a physical diameter of 12.7 mm was filled with propane-based tissue-equivalent gas surrounded by a wall of A-150 tissue-equivalent plastic that was 2.54 mm to thick. Measurements and Monte Carlo simulations were used to record the energy deposition and the trajectory of the incident particle on an event-by-event basis for ions ranging in atomic number from 2 ((4)He) to 26 ((56)Fe) and in energy from 200 MeV/nucleon to 1000 MeV/nucleon. In the simulations, tracking of secondary electrons was terminated when the range of an electron was below a specified threshold. The effects of range cuts for electrons at 0.5 μm, 1 μm, 10 μm, and 100 μm were evaluated. To simulate an energy deposition influenced by large numbers of low energy electrons with large transverse momentum, it was necessary to track electrons down to range cuts of 10 μm or less. The Geant4 simulated data closely matched the measured data acquired using a TEPC for incident particles traversing the center of the detector as well as near the gas-wall interface. Values of frequency mean lineal energy and dose mean lineal energy were within 8% of the measured data. The production of secondary particles in the aluminum vacuum chamber had no effect on the response of the TEPC for (56)Fe at 1000 MeV/nucleon. The results of this study confirm that Geant4 can simulate patterns of energy deposition for existing microdosimeters and is valuable for improving the design of a new generation of detectors used for space dosimetry and for characterizing particle beams used in hadron radiotherapy.