Theory of Radiation Chemistry. IV. Chemical Reactions in the General Track Composed of <i>N</i> Particles

Abstract

The chemical reactions which occur in particle tracks are diffusion-controlled. In this paper a set of partial differential equations is presented which describes the dissipation of a track composed of N particles. These equations involve functions which can be interpreted as correlation functions for the relative distribution of the particles. A superposition approximation is introduced which greatly simplifies the equations and a method for obtaining the correlation functions is presented. As an example of application of these equations a model for the action of ionizing radiation on water is discussed. It is shown that the radiation chemistry of water is adequately described for reasonable values of the parameters of the model.