Study of ¹²C fragmentation for hadrontherapy

During the treatment of cancerous diseases using ions such as ¹²C, the beam will undergo nuclear reactions with the tissues leading to the production of lighter secondary fragments. This tends to delocate a part of the dose into healthy tissues and create a mixed radiation field. In order to improve the knowledge on the projectile fragmentation, an experiment was performed by our collaboration in March 2015 with a 50 MeV/n ¹²C beam at GANIL. This led to the measurement of double differential cross sections in angle and energy of every isotope created by the fragmentation of carbon on targets of medical interest (C, H, O and Ca). Energy and angular distributions, as well as production rates have also been obtained for every fragment and every target. Experimental data were then compared with nuclear reaction models included in the Monte-Carlo (MC) simulation codes, GEANT4 and PHITS. Important discrepancies were observed with our data, as well as between models. These observations had already led our collaboration in creating a new MC model called SLIIPIE, specialized in intermediate energies reactions with light ions. The parameters of this model were then adjusted in order to best fit the experimental data. (author)