Low energy 3He induced reaction for radiotherapy purposes

The feasibility of taking advantage of the D(3He,p)4He reaction for proton radiotherapy purposes is studied. Among the strongly proton emitting exoergic reactions, the reaction which involves 5Li as an intermediate nucleus stands out because of its relatively high cross section values. This has a maximum of about 830 mb around the low 3He ion energy of 645 keV. In the resonant conditions, protons are emitted with energies ranging from 17.1 to 14.8 MeV from 0 to 90°. For different incident energies, the proton spectra is calculated as a function of the emission angle; as an example of 18.6 MeV are emitted at zero angle. The angular distribution is known to be isotropic in the center of mass system up to 300 keV and tends to become anisotropic above the energy of the maximum cross section. The anisotropy factor in the laboratory system can be considered constant for energies up to 5 MeV.