The pion single-event latch-up cross-section enhancement : mechanisms and consequences for accelerator hardness assurance

Pions make up a large part of the hadronic environment typical of accelerator mixed-fields. Characterizing device cross-sections against pions is usually disregarded in favour of tests with protons, whose single-event latch-up cross-section is, nonetheless, experimentally found to be lower than that of pions for all energies below 250 MeV. While Monte-Carlo simulations are capable of reproducing such behavior, the reason of the observed pion cross-section enhancement can only be explained by a deeper analysis of the underlying mechanisms dominating proton-silicon and pion-silicon reactions. The mechanisms dominating the single-event latchup response are found to vary with the energy under c…