Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 49, No. 1, July 2006, pp.

7376
Photon Mass Energy Absorption Coecients from 0.4 MeV to 10 MeV
for Silicon, Carbon, Copper and Sodium Iodide
H. Oz, O. Gurler

and A. Gultekin
Physics Department, Faculty of Arts and Sciences,
Uludag University, Gorukle Campus, 16059, Bursa, Turkey
S. Yalcin
Education Faculty, Kastamonu University, 37200, Kastamonu, Turkey
O. Gundogdu
School of Engineering, University of Surrey, Guildford, GU2 7XH, United Kingdom
(Received 23 November 2005, in nal form 31 March 2006)
The absorption coecients have been widely used for problems and applications involving dose
calculations. Direct measurements of the coecients are dicult, and theoretical computations
are usually employed. In this paper, analytical equations are presented for determining the mass
energy absorption coecients for gamma rays with an incident energy range between 0.4 MeV and
10 MeV in silicon, carbon, copper and sodium iodide. The mass energy absorption coecients for
gamma rays were calculated, and the results obtained were compared with the values reported in
the literature.
PACS numbers: 25.20.Dc, 25.20.Lj
Keywords: Photon, Mass energy absorption coecient
I. INTRODUCTION
The photon mass energy absorption coecient (
en
/)
has an essential role in the estimation of the absorbed
dose in medical physics, industrial and agricultural ir-
radiation technology, and other practical problems in-
volving eects and metrology of photon radiation [1].
The radiation dose is generally understood as the mea-
sure of energy that is transferred into a medium as a
result of an interaction. Dierent amounts of energies
are transferred into the medium in photoelectric absorp-
tion, Compton scattering, and pair production [2] and
must be accounted for.
Absorption coecients are a measure of the average
fractional incident photon energy translated into the ki-
netic energy of charged particles as a result of inter-
actions between photons and atoms in materials, such
as incoherent scattering, the atomic photo eect and
positron-electron pair production. The coecients are
calculated using theoretical cross-sections for these inter-
actions and the ratio of charged-particle kinetic energy to
incident-photon energy resulting from each of these inter-
actions [3]. The events that gamma rays will go through
after interactions with matter are also important factors
in the calculation of the absorption coecients and en-

E-mail: ogurler@uludag.edu.tr; Fax: +90-224-4428022

ergy distributions [2,4].
Many authors have measured or calculated the absorp-
tion coecients and published them in tabular forms.
Berger [5] calculated the mass energy values of photons
theoretically. Hubbell and Berger [6] presented values
of absorption coecients for air, water, and 18 elements
over the range 10 keV E 10 MeV. Hubbell [4] also
calculated the mass energy absorption coecient values
theoretically for H, C, N, O, Ar and seven mixtures for
energies from 0.1 keV to 20 MeV. The same researcher
calculated the mass energy absorption coecient values
theoretically for 40 elements and for 45 mixtures and
compounds from 1 keV to 20 MeV [1]. Higgins et al.
[7] calculated the mass energy transfer (
tr
/) and the
mass energy absorption coecient values theoretically
for 47 media from 1 keV to 100 MeV. Ban et al. [3]
obtained mass energy absorption coecient values of 30-
keV gamma rays for nitrogen and argon experimentally.
Bhandal et al. [8] calculated the mass energy absorp-
tion coecient values of fatty acids for gamma rays with
662-keV and 1115-keV energies. Bradley et al. [9] deter-
mined the mass energy absorption coecient values for
paran experimentally in 1989, and Singh et al. [10] de-
termined the mass energy absorption coecient values
of gamma rays with 662 keV for 10 compound experi-
mentally. Gurler et al. [11] calculated the absorption
coecients for aluminium and water theoretically, and
-73-
-74- Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 49, No. 1, July 2006
Shakhreet et al. [12] measured the mass-energy absorp-
tion coecients of paran wax and gypsum at 662 keV
experimentally.
Evaluation routes for the calculation of mass energy
absorption coecients reported in the literature can be
summarized as follows: In the calculation of
en
/, in in-
coherent scattering, all energies except the energies spent
for uorescence and Bremsstrahlung events, in the pho-
toelectric eect, all energies except the energies spent
for uorescence and Bremsstrahlung events, and in pair
production, all of the energy except the energy spent for
annihilation and kinetic energies transferred to an elec-
tron and a positron are taken into account.
In this study, an alternative method is proposed for
the calculation of the mass energy absorption coecients
for gamma rays with incident energies from 0.4 to 10
MeV in silicon, carbon, copper, and sodium iodide. The
method in its proposed form does not provide results for
gamma rays with energies smaller than 0.4 MeV due to
the numerical integration employed. For this reason, the
absorption coecients were not calculated for gamma
rays with energies smaller than 0.4 MeV.
II. METHOD OF CALCULATION
In the theoretical and experimental studies reported
in the literature, the mass energy absorption coecients
were calculated by using mass energy transfer coe-
cients:

en

= (

tr

) (1 G) (1)
where G is the fraction of the energy of a secondary
charged particle spent in the medium via Bremsstrahlung
interaction [1,4,7,8,10]. A number of calculation schemes
are given by in Refs. 2 and 4. Here, we propose an
analytical equation for
en
/ by considering the inter-
actions that gamma rays go through with the medium
and by considering where and how gamma-ray energies
are transferred during these interactions. The proposed
analytical equation embodies the denitions given in the
literature.
In the calculation of the mass energy coecients, the
nature of the interactions that gamma rays go through
with the target and the energy transferred in these inter-
actions are taken into account, including ionization dur-
ing each interaction. The expression for
en
/ is then
given as

en

=

ph

E
phI
E
+

c

E
cI
E
+

pp

E
ppI
E
(2)
where

ph

,

c

, and

pp

are the mass attenuation coef-

cients of photoelectric eect, Compton scattering, and
pair production, respectively. These were calculated and
tabulated by Hubbell [2]. The energy transferred in the
photoelectric eect is expressed as
E
phI
E
= 1 R(E

) (3)
where R is the radiation eciency value dened by
Berger and Seltzer [13]. The energy of scattered gamma
rays varies according to scattering angle in incoherent
scattering, so the energy transferred to an electron will
change as a function of the scattering angle. Because
of this, the incoherent mass attenuation coecient and
energy fractions of scattered gammas will change with
respect to each energy value, and the second term in Eq.
(2) can be written as

E
cI
E
= (

) (
n
i=1
d

i
/

c
/

E
e

)
i
E

E
cI)
i
E
e

)
i
) (4)
Similar to the method given in Eq. (3), the incoher-
ent scattering energy fraction an electron has for a given
energy is given as
E
cI
E
e

= 1 R(E
e
) (5)
The contribution of incoherent scattering is obtained by
multiplying the atomic dierential scattering mass at-
tenuation coecient by the expression given in Eq. (5)
by searching with a certain dE energy range for all the
energies of scattered gammas. Furthermore, the third
term in Eq. (2) can be written as
E
ppI
E
=
E
e

E

E
e

I
E
e

+
E
e
+
E

E
e
+
I
E
e
+
(6)
The energy fraction that indicates how much of the en-
ergy of electron and positron was transferred for the ion-
ization of the medium is given, similar to the Eq. (3)
as
E
e

I
E
e

= 1 R(E
e
) (7)
E
e
+
I
E
e
+
= 1 R(E
e
+) (8)
The energy fraction of pair production is obtained by
putting these energy fractions back into Eq. (6). Each
of the contributions to
en
/ can, thus, be determined.
III. RESULTS
Tables 1 and 2 give
en
/ values as a functions of the
photon energy for silicon, carbon, copper, and sodium
iodide. The radiation eciency values smaller than 0.01
MeV given in Ref. 13 used to obtain the energy fractions
in the calculations were not tabulated. The minimum
value of dE, the energy range, which is searched in or-
der to obtain the energy fraction values with numerical
integration in Eq. (4), is taken as 0.01 MeV. The en-
ergies transferred to an electron from gamma rays with
small energies (E

< 0.04 MeV) are smaller when com-

pared with the dE energy range. As we stated in previ-
ous sections, the method employed here did not give the
Photon Mass Energy Absorption Coecients from H. Oz et al. -75-
Table 1. Comparison of calculated values of
en
/ for 0.4 10 MeV. The units are cm
2
g
1
.

en
/
Photon Energy
Silicon Carbon
(MeV)
This work Ref. 1 Ref. 7 This work Ref. 1 Ref. 7
0.4 0.0297 0.0297 0.0297 0.0294 0.0295 0.0295
0.5 0.0297 0.0297 0.0297 0.0296 0.0297 0.0297
0.6 0.0296 0.0295 0.0295 0.0295 0.0296 0.0295
0.8 0.0288 0.0287 0.0288 0.0288 0.0288 0.0289
1 0.0278 0.0278 0.0278 0.0279 0.0279 0.0279
1.5 0.0254 0.0253 0.0253 0.0254 0.0255 0.0255
2 0.0235 0.0234 0.0234 0.0234 0.0234 0.0234
3 0.0211 0.0210 0.0210 0.0204 0.0204 0.0205
4 0.0197 0.0196 0.0196 0.0183 0.0185 0.0185
5 0.0190 0.0187 0.0188 0.0169 0.0171 0.0171
6 0.0185 0.0182 0.0182 0.0158 0.0160 0.0160
8 0.0180 0.0177 0.0177 0.0143 0.0147 0.0147
10 0.0178 0.0175 0.0175 0.0134 0.0138 0.0138
Table 2. Comparison of the calculated values of
en
/ for 0.4 10 MeV. The units are cm
2
g
1
.

en
/
Photon Energy
Copper Sodium iodide
(MeV)
This work Ref. 1 Ref. 7 This work Ref. 1
0.4 0.0315 0.0314 0.0314 0.0557 0.0529
0.5 0.0293 0.0294 0.0295 0.0429 0.0410
0.6 0.0282 0.0284 0.0284 0.0361 0.0351
0.8 0.0268 0.0269 0.0269 0.0300 0.0295
1 0.0256 0.0256 0.0256 0.0269 0.0266
1.5 0.0231 0.0231 0.0231 0.0229 0.0227
2 0.0217 0.0216 0.0216 0.0212 0.0211
3 0.0201 0.0202 0.0202 0.0206 0.0204
4 0.0201 0.0198 0.0199 0.0211 0.0208
5 0.0200 0.0199 0.0200 0.0220 0.0215
6 0.0203 0.0202 0.0203 0.0229 0.0223
8 0.0213 0.0209 0.0211 0.0246 0.0238
10 0.0219 0.0216 0.0218 0.0261 0.0250
best results for gamma rays with energies smaller than
0.4 MeV due to limitations of the numerical integration
method employed. For this reason, the absorption co-
ecients for gamma rays with energies smaller than 0.4
MeV were not calculated in this study.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
Using the proposed method, the
en
/ values for sili-
con, carbon, copper, and sodium iodide were calculated
quickly and eciently. The calculated coecient values
are in very good agreement with the tables for
en
/
published by Hubbell [1] and Higgins et al. [7]. The
method we present here allows the mass energy absorp-
tion coecients to be calculated for many other media by
combining the radiation eciency values given in Ref. 13
with the interaction cross-sections committed by gamma
rays given in Ref. 2 in an ecient and practical manner.
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