stopping_power

plasmapy.particles.atomic.stopping_power(
incident_particle: str | int | integer | Particle | CustomParticle | Quantity,
material: str,
energies: Annotated[Quantity, Unit('MeV')] | None = None,
return_interpolator: bool = False,
component: Literal['total', 'electronic', 'nuclear'] = 'total',
) → tuple[Quantity, Quantity] | Callable[[Annotated[Quantity, Unit('J')]], Annotated[Quantity, Unit('cm2 MeV / g')]][source]

Calculate stopping powers for a provided particle in a provided material.

Parameters:

  • incident_particle (particle-like) – The incident particle. Only protons and alpha particles are currently supported.

  • material (str) – The material the particle is being stopped in. See notes for details on supported materials.

  • energies (Quantity, default: See notes.) – The particle kinetic energies for which the stopping power is calculated.

  • return_interpolator (bool, default: False) – The function will by default return a tuple of energies and their associated stopping power. By setting this argument to True, the function will instead return a Callable, which takes in energies and will return the associated stopping energies. Under the hood, this is just a wrapped instance of CubicSpline with units.

  • component ({“total”, “electronic”, “nuclear”}, default: total) – The component of the stopping power to be calculated. Supported values are electronic, nuclear, and total for the electronic, nuclear, and total energies, respectively.

Returns:

A two-tuple where the first element represents the energy values. The second element is an array of the associated stopping powers.

Return type:

Tuple[u.Quantity, u.Quantity[u.MeV * u.cm**2 / u.g]]

Notes

The data for stopping power is taken from the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Stopping-Power and Range Tables [Berger et al., 2005]. Valid materials can be found on the NIST STAR website. The default energies are taken from the data points in the STAR database.