Silicon fragmentation under exposure to high-energy cosmic protons: Calculations with different optical model potentials
The results of calculations for the mass, charge, and energy distributions of nuclear reaction products containing the heavy nuclei that come into being upon the interaction of a proton with energies between 30 and 400 MeV and the 28Si nucleus are presented which is the main chemical element in spacecraft the onboard electronics. Similar calculations for the (p + 27Al) reaction were performed using the EMPIRE-II-19 program using different potentials (Becchetti-Greenlees (p, n), Wilmore-Hodson (p, n), Madland (p, p), Koning-Delaroch (p, p), and Fadden-Satchler (p, α)) of the optical model. The high sensitivity of the kinetic spectrum of the final nuclei to the energy of incident protons, and to the parameters of the optical potentials, is illustrated.