Demand for large area parallel plate ionization chamber (PPIC) or large area ionization chamber (LAIC) has risen in recent years due to several advantages of the large effective area in monitoring therapeutic radiation beams. PPICs are designed for the measurements of beam profile and dosimetry in radiation therapy quality assurance (QA) procedures. Objective . Heterogeneous responses over the large sensitive area pose an undeniable concern for the straightforward applications of PPICs in clinical dosimetry. Uniformity calibration for the detector response is thus essential for the accurate performance of each PPIC unit. Approach. A large area XY strip PPIC, characterized by a large effective area of 345.44 × 345.44 mm 2 and 256 readout channels, was investigated in this study. A new systematic uniformity calibration is developed to improve the lateral response of the PPIC over the measurements for both narrow beams and large square field beams. A 2D response map of the PPIC was obtained by a spot-scanning method using a compact x-ray tube (mini x-ray). The mini x-ray, providing stable radiation (uncertainty <0.1%), was moved with a step size of 20 mm in 2 dimensions across the entire PPIC surface to collect a complete spot scan. Different uniformity calibration methods were introduced for the measurement of the PPIC by adopting the information from the detector 2D response map. Main results. Deviation of the detector response, before calibration, was observed to reach about 7% for the testing PPIC unit which is much higher than the recommended uniformity response of 1% (IAEA TRS-398). The uniformity response of the PPIC improved significantly to less than 1% across the detector surface after calibration. Significance. The proposed methods enable the practical application of PPIC in routine clinical dosimetry and can be reliably adopted by any radiation facility to perform daily and monthly QA.

The purpose of this study is to compare the angular and spatial distributions of therapeutic-energy proton beams obtained from the FLUKA, GEANT4 and MCNP6 Monte Carlo codes. The Monte Carlo simulations of proton beams passing through two thin targets and a water phantom were investigated to compare the primary and secondary proton fluence distributions and dosimetric differences among these codes. The angular fluence distributions, central axis depth-dose profiles, and lateral distributions of the Bragg peak cross-field were calculated to compare the proton angular and spatial distributions and energy deposition. Benchmark verifications from three different Monte Carlo simulations could be used to evaluate the residual proton fluence for the mean range and to estimate the depth and lateral dose distributions and the characteristic depths and lengths along the central axis as the physical indices corresponding to the evaluation of treatment effectiveness.

Parallel plate ionization chambers with segmented strips or pixels are developed for proton beam monitoring and dose measurement. 256 channels of readout electronics together with high voltage power supplier, FPGA and USB are built on a single PCB and readout by LABVIEW based DAQ system. With replaceable resistors, sensitivity of each channel varies from 1 ADC / 1 nA to 1 ADC / 5 pA to handle large dynamical range in proton therapy. Chambers are tested with 100,200 and 394 MeV proton beams with narrow beam widths. Beam profiles obtained by strip and by pad chambers are compared. Depth dose distributions of protons in water are obtained with 100 and 200 MeV proton beams. Results from the GEANT4 simulation reproduce measurement reasonably.

Measurements of inclusive charged-hadron transverse-momentum and pseudorapidity distributions are presented for proton-proton collisions at \(\sqrt{s} = 0.9 \) and 2.36 TeV. The data were collected with the CMS detector during the LHC commissioning in December 2009. For non-single-diffractive interactions, the average charged-hadron transverse momentum is measured to be 0.46 ± 0.01 (stat.) ± 0.01 (syst.) GeV/c at 0.9 TeV and 0.50 ± 0.01 (stat.) ± 0.01 (syst.) GeV/c at 2.36 TeV, for pseudorapidities between --2.4 and +2.4. At these energies, the measured pseudorapidity densities in the central region, dN ch/dη||η|<0.5, are 3:48 ± 0:02 (stat.) ± 0.13 (syst.) and 4:47 ± 0:04 (stat.) ± 0.16 (syst.), respectively. The results at 0.9 TeV are in agreement with previous measurements and confirm the expectation of near equal hadron production in \( \overline p p \) and pp collisions. The results at 2.36 TeV represent the highest-energy measurements at a particle collider to date.

Ensuring the radiation hardness of PbWO4 crystals was one of the main priorities during the construction of the electromagnetic calorimeter of the CMS experiment at CERN. The production on an industrial scale of radiation hard crystals and their certification over a period of several years represented a difficult challenge both for CMS and for the crystal suppliers. The present article reviews the related scientific and technological problems encountered.

The response of the combined CMS barrel calorimeters to hadrons, electrons and muons over a range from 2 to 350 GeV/c has been measured. The analysis of the differences in calorimeter response to charged pions, kaons, protons and antiprotons and a discussion of the underlying phenomena are presented. Techniques to correct the signals from the considerably different electromagnetic (EB) and hadronic (HB) barrel calorimeters in reconstructing the energies of hadrons are also presented. Above 5 GeV/c, these corrections improve the energy resolution of the combined system where the stochastic term equals 84.7% and the constant term is 7.4%. The corrected mean response remains constant within 1.3% rms.

Ensuring the radiation hardness of PbWO4 crystals was one of the main priorities during the construction of the electromagnetic calorimeter of the CMS experiment at CERN. The production on an industrial scale of radiation hard crystals and their certification over a period of several years represented a difficult challenge both for CMS and for the crystal suppliers. The present article reviews the related scientific and technological problems encountered.

Calibration of the relative response of the individual channels of the barrel electromagnetic calorimeter of the CMS detector was accomplished, before installation, with cosmic ray muons and test beams. One fourth of the calorimeter was exposed to a beam of high energy electrons and the relative calibration of the channels, the intercalibration, was found to be reproducible to a precision of about 0.3%. Additionally, data were collected with cosmic rays for the entire ECAL barrel during the commissioning phase. By comparing the intercalibration constants obtained with the electron beam data with those from the cosmic ray data, it is demonstrated that the latter provide an intercalibration precision of 1.5% over most of the barrel ECAL. The best intercalibration precision is expected to come from the analysis of events collected in situ during the LHC operation. Using data collected with both electrons and pion beams, several aspects of the intercalibration procedures based on electrons or neutral pions were investigated.

The energy resolution of the barrel part of the CMS Electromagnetic Calorimeter has been studied using electrons of 20 to 250 GeV in a test beam. The incident electron's energy was reconstructed by summing the energy measured in arrays of 3 x 3 or 5 x 5 channels. There was no significant amount of correlated noise observed within these arrays. For electrons incident at the centre of the studied 3 x 3 arrays of crystals, the mean stochastic term was measured to be 2.8% and the mean constant term to be 0.3%. The amount of the incident electrons' energy which is contained within the array depends on its position of incidence. The variation of the containment with position is corrected for using the distribution of the measured energy within the array. For uniform illumination of a crystal with 120 GeV electrons a resolution of 0.5% was achieved. The energy resolution meets the design goal for the detector.

This work summarizes the development and validation of a high throughput approach for automated design, synthesis, screening, and statistical analysis of supported heterogeneous catalyst systems. The catalytic oxidation of NO over supported Pt is used as a tractable case study to demonstrate consistency with published results and to generate a self-consistent set of data to evaluate the influence of synthesis and processing variables on catalytic performance using a five-factor two-level full factorial design-of-experiment (DOE). A novel approach is demonstrated for data descriptor generation whereby a simple model is used to extract kinetic parameters that can be used independently to evaluate performance, or used to calculate secondary performance metrics. The kinetic data obtained revealed a compensation effect for this reaction over Al2O3 and SiO2 supported Pt and is the first reported observation of this phenomenon for the oxidation of NO to NO2. Relative performance rankings of Pt supported on Al2O3 and SiO2 show an enhanced intrinsic rate for all the Pt/SiO2 catalysts. Both the Pt/Al2O3 and Pt/SiO2 systems were found to exhibit structure sensitivity, with the change in rate with average particle size appearing stronger for the Pt/Al2O3 system. Statistical analysis of the performance data was used to identify the main effects impacting the NO oxidation rate at 200°C. The relative order of importance of the factors evaluated was found to be support>pretreatment>loading>calcination atmosphere>calcination temperature>precursor salt.

The amplitude of the signal collected from the PbWO4 crystals of the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter is reconstructed by a digital filtering technique. The amplitude reconstruction has been studied with test beam data recorded from a fully equipped barrel supermodule. Issues specific to data taken in the test beam are investigated, and the implementation of the method for CMS data taking is discussed.

Pt–Rh three-way catalysts (TWCs) of two formulations were examined by electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) and cross sectional transmission electron microscopy (TEM), in order to study the effect of accelerated aging on microstructure. Both formulations have Pt and Rh applied in separate washcoat layers, Rh in a zirconia-rich outer layer and Pt in an alumina-rich inner layer(s). Microstructural analyses show that in spite of the initial separation, the precious metals inter-diffuse between the washcoat layers and alloy during aging. Following dynamometer aging the two formulations exhibited significant differences in the precious metal (PM) particle size distributions and the correlation between PM particle size and composition. These differences are attributed to the increased transport of Pt due to the presence of ceria and zirconia in the alumina-rich inner washcoat of one formulation, compared to other formulation. The presence or absence of porosity > 1 μ m in diameter and differences in initial Pt distributions in the inner washcoat were also noted as possibly contributing to the PM particle growth. The transition alumina of one formulation, containing Ba, partially transformed to corundum during aging. The other formulation utilized a La-stabilized alumina which did not transform to corundum after aging.

Performance tests of some aspects of the CMS ECAL were carried out on modules of the "barrel" sub-system in 2002 and 2003. A brief test with high energy electron beams was made in late 2003 to validate prototypes of the new Very Front End electronics. The final versions of the monitoring and cooling systems, and of the high and low voltage regulation were used in these tests. The results are consistent with the performance targets including those for noise and overall energy resolution, required to fulfil the physics programme of CMS at the LHC.

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