Carbon Fragmentation Cross Sections for Hadrontherapy and Space Radiation Protection

Fragmentation reactions represent a serious complication in hadrontherapy and space radiation protection. In order to predict their effects, both reliable Monte Carlo codes and experimental data are needed. The shortage of precise measurements, especially of double differential cross sections, has triggered many dedicated experiments at relativistic energies. Aiming to explore the Fermi energy regime, as well, where different reaction mechanisms are involved, we measured the C-12 fragmentation at 62 AMeV on a C-12 and a Au-197 target. A high granularity Si-CsI hodoscope allowed to identify the charge and the mass of detected fragments and measure their energy and emission angle. In this work we report the double differential cross sections for the production of different fragments as a function of the emission angle. Experimental results are compared with the GEANT-4 Monte Carlo predictions performed using two reaction models, the Quantum Molecular Dynamic and the Binary Light Ion Cascade.