Response of a high-pressure ionization chamber in dependence on filling gas and radiation quality

Studies on the characteristics of ionization chambers as a function of the pressure of various filling gases are of interest in radiation protection. The tissue equivalent (TE) ionization chambers used for dosimetry in radiobiology have too low a sensitivity for application in radiation protection and provide no information on radiation quality. These restrictions might be resolved by operating ionization chambers at higher gas pressures. With the aim of obtaining a detector with a greater sensitivity, the reading of the high-pressure ionization chamber has been studied for other gases by use of 137Cs γ rays. For various gases, the relative reading as a function of gas pressure is shown. (Auth.)