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Research Articles

A stochastic cascade model for Auger-electron emitting radionuclides

, , , , &
Pages 641-653 | Received 08 Sep 2015, Accepted 09 Feb 2016, Published online: 24 Mar 2016
 

Abstract

To benchmark a Monte Carlo model of the Auger cascade that has been developed at the Australian National University (ANU) against the literature data. The model is applicable to any Auger-electron emitting radionuclide with nuclear structure data in the format of the Evaluated Nuclear Structure Data File (ENSDF). Schönfeld’s algorithms and the BrIcc code were incorporated to obtain initial vacancy distributions due to electron capture (EC) and internal conversion (IC), respectively. Atomic transition probabilities were adopted from the Evaluated Atomic Data Library (EADL) for elements with atomic number, Z = 1–100. Atomic transition energies were evaluated using a relativistic Dirac-Fock method. An energy-restriction protocol was implemented to eliminate energetically forbidden transitions from the simulations. Calculated initial vacancy distributions and average energy spectra of 123I, 124I, and 125I were compared with the literature data. In addition, simulated kinetic energy spectra and frequency distributions of the number of emitted electrons and photons of the three iodine radionuclides are presented. Some examples of radiation spectra of individual decays are also given. Good agreement with the published data was achieved except for the outer-shell Auger and Coster-Kronig transitions. Nevertheless, the model needs to be compared with experimental data in a future study.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Funding information

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery grant (DP140103317).

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