Contribution of Coulomb Elastic Scattering to the Energy Loss Distribution of Protons in Thin Si Slabs

In this summer-student project, we have focused on the study of recoil energy transfers during Coulomb elastic scattering of protons traversing a thin silicon slab. This geometry is representative for radiation damage studies in electronics. A dedicated subroutine has been written to explicitly evaluate the recoil energy transfer after a Coulomb single scattering event, so as to evaluate the contribution of this process to the distribution of energy losses of protons traversing thin slabs. We have furthermore analyzed the energy range where the contribution of Coulomb scattering to the energy-loss distribution is significant before being overshadowed by nuclear processes.