NIST Physical Measurement Laboratory ESTARASTARPSTAR

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1. Introduction

Printed tables remain indispensable as a means of quickly looking up information, but there is an increasing need for computer-readable databases that can quickly generate the desired data. In order to meet such a need, this report presents the web databases ESTAR , PSTAR, and ASTAR which calculate stopping powers, ranges and related quantities, for electrons, protons and helium ions. The underlying methods were developed by members of a report committee sponsored by the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements (ICRU).1

With a default option, ESTAR generates stopping powers and ranges for electrons which are the same as those tabulated in ICRU Report 37 (ICRU, 1984) for 72 materials at a standard grid of 81 kinetic energies between 10 keV and 1000 MeV. ESTAR can also calculate similar tables for any other element, compound or mixture. Furthermore it can calculate stopping powers at any set of kinetic energies between 1 keV and 10 GeV.

With a default option, PSTAR and ASTAR generate the stopping powers and ranges for protons and helium ions tabulated in ICRU Report 49 (ICRU, 1993) for 74 materials at a standard grid of 133 kinetic energies between 1 keV and 10 GeV for protons, and 122 kinetic energies between 1 keV and 1 GeV for helium ions. These databases can also calculate similar results at any other energy grid between these limits.


1The members of this committee were H. H. Anderson, M. J. Berger (chairman), H. Bichsel, J. A. Dennis, M. Inokuti (vice-chairman), D. Powers, S. M. Seltzer, D. Thwaites, J. E. Turner, and D. E. Watt.

Introduction   |   ESTAR   |   PSTAR and ASTAR   |   References   |   Appendix


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