Comparative energy dependence of proton and pion degradation in diamond

A comparative theoretical study of the damages produced by protons and pions, in the energy range 50 MeV–50 GeV, in diamond, is presented. The concentration of primary defects (CPD) induced by hadron irradiation is used to describe material degradation. The CPD has very different behaviours for protons and pions: the proton degradation is important at low energies and is higher than the pion one in the whole energy range investigated, with the exception of the Δ33 resonance region, where a large maximum of the degradation exists for pions. In comparison with silicon, the most investigated and the most utilised semiconductor material for detectors, diamond theoretically proves to be one order of magnitude more resistant both to proton and pion irradiation.