Registration of proton induced spallation products of U, Pb and Au in mica track detectors

Detection of fission and spallation–evaporation residues resulting from interaction of relativistic protons with uranium, lead and gold targets in mica track detectors is investigated by the Monte Carlo method and using experimental data available in literature. It is shown that the contribution of spallation–evaporation residues to total track density is strongly dependent on target thickness and is the least for thick targets. This contribution in the case of thick target materials with Z≥79 is less than or is within the statistical uncertainty of a typical track density measurement. Although our results on registration and detection of the spallation residues in mica are based on the interactions of uranium and lead with protons at 1A GeV and gold with protons at 0.8A GeV, they are applicable to all targets with Z≥79 and for proton energies much higher than 1 GeV.