Detector Response to Swift Heavy Ions

Track theory is a description of the structure of particle tracks which characterizes the response of many different sorts of detectors to energetic heavy ions. It is a parametric rather than a mechanistic description. The medium is a black box containing targets whose response to gamma rays is described by the cumulative Poisson distribution. The response to swift heavy ions is intimately related to the response to gamma rays through the radial distribution of dose about the ion’s path