Correlated continuum distorted-wave resonant double electron capture in He2+-He collisions

Radiation track, DNA damage and response-a review

The purpose of this paper has been to review the current status and progress of the field of radiation biophysics, and draw attention to the fact that physics, in general, and radiation physics in particular, with the aid of mathematical modeling, can help elucidate biological mechanisms and cancer therapies. We hypothesize that concepts of condensed-matter physics along with the new genomic knowledge and technologies and mechanistic mathematical modeling in conjunction with advances in experimental DNA (Deoxyrinonucleic acid molecule) repair and cell signaling have now provided us with unprecedented opportunities in radiation biophysics to address problems in targeted cancer therapy, and genetic risk estimation in humans. Obviously, one is not dealing with 'low-hanging fruit', but it will be a major scientific achievement if it becomes possible to state, in another decade or so, that we can link mechanistically the stages between the initial radiation-induced DNA damage; in particular, at doses of radiation less than 2 Gy and with structural changes in genomic DNA as a precursor to cell inactivation and/or mutations leading to genetic diseases. The paper presents recent development in the physics of radiation track structure contained in the computer code system KURBUC, in particular for low-energy electrons in the condensed phase of water for which we provide a comprehensive discussion of the dielectric response function approach. The state-of-the-art in the simulation of proton and carbon ion tracks in the Bragg peak region is also presented. The paper presents a critical discussion of the models used for elastic scattering, and the validity of the trajectory approach in low-electron transport. Brief discussions of mechanistic and quantitative aspects of microdosimetry, DNA damage and DNA repair are also included as developed by the authors' work.

Role of the ground state in electron-atom double ionization

Recently, absolute measurements have been reported for double ionization of helium by 5.6 keV electron-impact. At this high energy, one would think that the first Born approximation for the interaction of the projectile with the atom would be valid. However, on the basis of a lowest-order implementation of a Faddeev-type approach, Berakdar [Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 4036 (2000)]] concluded that the approximation was not valid. Here we argue that (i) it is valid at this energy and (ii) the previous discrepancy between calculations in the first Born approximation and the overall magnitude of the measurements was due to a poor description of the ground state.