Radiological physics and chemistry

Studies made by the authors over the past several years on the fundamental nature of the chemical effects of high energy radiations have elucidated the role of track reactions and have called attention to the fact that there are also multitrack effects in many irradiated systems. Such effects are particularly expected in irradiated biological systems because radicals will usually be created with lifetimes longer than track lifetimes. We have studied, as an example, multitrack effects in the radiolysis of water because single track effects are so well known in water and experimental data are available for comparison with calculations based on our models. The principal objective is, of course, biological systems, and models are also being developed for the radiolysis of solutions of DNA