A comparison between Geant4 PIXE simulations and experimental data for standard reference samples

The Geant4 PIXE de-excitation processes are used to simulate proton beam interactions with sample materials of known composition. Simulations involve four mono-elemental materials; Cu, Fe, Si and Al and three relatively complex materials: stainless steel, phosphor bronze and basal BE-N reference material composed of 25 different elements. The simulation results are compared to experimental spectra acquired for real samples analyzed using 3 MeV incident protons delivered by an ion tandem accelerator. Data acquisition was performed using a Si(Li) detector and an aluminum funny filter was added for the three last mentioned samples depending on the configuration to reduce the noise and obtain clear resulting spectrum. The results show a good agreement between simulations and measurements for the different samples.