OBSERVATION OF INTERFERENCE BETWEEN ATOMIC BREMSSTRAHLUNG AND NUCLEAR BREMSSTRAHLUNG

An aluminum target was bombarded with 1.5 MeV protons and continuous x-rays were measured at the angles of 45°, 90° and 135° with respect to the beam direction. By investigating the shape of the x-ray energy spectrum, it was recognized that, the continuous x-rays below 12 keV are atomic bremsstrahlung (AB) and those of above 12 keV are nuclear bremsstrahlung (NB), and AB and NB are mingled in the energy region of around 12 keV The x-ray energy dependence of angular distributions presented well a change from the process of AB to that of NB in the continuous x-ray spectrum. Interference between AB and NB were discussed on the basis of PWBA theory. Continuous x-ray production cross sections were calculated on the basis of PWBA BEA and a semi-classical theory and compared with the experimental results. The theoretical prediction reproduced well the experimental cross sections over the wide range of 6 orders in magnitude and of 2 keV – 35 keV in the energy except for the energy region mingled with AB and NB. The ratio of the theoretical cross sections to the experimental ones showed an interference effect between AB and NB in their mingled region.