Deuteron-induced reactions generated by intense Lasers for PET isotope production

Abstract

We investigate the feasibility of using laser accelerated protons/deuterons for positron emission tomography (PET) isotope production by means of the nuclear reactions ${}^{11}$B($p,n$)${}^{11}$C and ${}^{10}$B($d,n$)${}^{11}$C. The second reaction has a positive Q-value and no energy threshold. One can, therefore, make use of the lower energy part of the laser-generated deuterons, which includes the majority of the accelerated deuterons. The ${}^{11}$C produced from the reaction ${}^{10}$B($d,n$)${}^{11}$C is estimated to be 7.4 $\times$ 10${}^9$ per laser-shot at the Titan laser at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Meanwhile a high-repetition table top laser irradiation is estimated to generate 3.5 $\times$ 10${}^7$ ${}^{11}$C per shot from the same reaction. In terms of the ${}^{11}$C activity, it is about 2 $\times$ 10${}^4$ Bq per shot. If this laser delivers kHz, the activity is integrated to 1 GBq after 3 minutes. The number is sufficient for the practical application in medical imaging for PET.

17 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (1)

• Circumstantial evidence for a non-Maxwellian plasma from femtosecond laser-matter interaction

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Gamow peak approximation near strong resonances
• Laser initiated p-11B fusion reactions in petawatt high-repetition-rates laser facilities
• Hydrodynamic Scaling Analysis of Nuclear Fusion driven by ultra-intense laser-plasma interactions