Comparative Energy Dependence of Proton and Pion Degradation in Diamond

TL;DR

This study compares how protons and pions cause damage in diamond across a wide energy range, revealing that diamond is significantly more resistant than silicon, especially at high energies.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical analysis of hadron-induced damage in diamond, highlighting its superior radiation resistance compared to silicon.

Findings

Protons cause more damage than pions except near the Delta33 resonance.

Diamond is an order of magnitude more resistant than silicon to hadron irradiation.

Damage behavior varies significantly between protons and pions across energies.

Abstract

A comparative theoretical study of the damages produced by protons and pions, in the energy range 50 MeV - 50 GeV, in diamond, is presented. The concentration of primary defects (CPD) induced by hadron irradiation is used to describe material degradation. The CPD has very different behaviours for protons and pions: the proton degradation is important at low energies and is higher than the pion one in the whole energy range investigated, with the exception of the Delta33 resonance region, where a large maximum of the degradation exists for pions. In comparison with silicon, the most investigated and the most studied material for detectors, diamond theoretically proves to be one order of magnitude more resistant, both to proton and pion irradiation.