Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
More generally, the term cross-section is used in physics to quantify the probability of a certain particle-particle interaction, e.g., scattering, electromagnetic absorption, etc. (Note that light in this context is described as consisting of particles, i.e., photons.) A typical absorption cross-section has units of cm 2 ⋅molecule −1.
In physics, the cross section is a measure of the probability that a specific process will take place in a collision of two particles. For example, the Rutherford cross-section is a measure of probability that an alpha particle will be deflected by a given angle during an interaction with an atomic nucleus.
absorption cross section and scattering cross section are both quantitatively related to the attenuation coefficient; see absorption cross section and scattering cross section for details; The attenuation coefficient is also sometimes called opacity ; see opacity (optics) .
The formula describes both the Thomson scattering of low energy photons (e.g. visible light) and the Compton scattering of high energy photons (e.g. x-rays and gamma-rays), showing that the total cross section and expected deflection angle decrease with increasing photon energy.
To describe the attenuation coefficient in a way independent of the number densities n i of the N attenuating species of the material sample, one introduces the attenuation cross section = (). σ i has the dimension of an area; it expresses the likelihood of interaction between the particles of the beam and the particles of the species i in the ...
The mass attenuation coefficient (also called "mass extinction coefficient"), which is the absorption coefficient divided by density; The absorption cross section and scattering cross-section, related closely to the absorption and attenuation coefficients, respectively "Extinction" in astronomy, which is equivalent to the attenuation coefficient
Mass attenuation coefficients of selected elements for X-ray photons with energies up to 250 keV. The mass attenuation coefficient, or mass narrow beam attenuation coefficient of a material is the attenuation coefficient normalized by the density of the material; that is, the attenuation per unit mass (rather than per unit of distance).
In X-ray radiography the calculation of the mean free path is more complicated, because photons are not mono-energetic, but have some distribution of energies called a spectrum. As photons move through the target material, they are attenuated with probabilities depending on their energy, as a result their distribution changes in process called ...