A critical overview of recent stopping power programs for positive ions in solid elements

Several tables exist in the literature containing stopping power data for different targets and projectile ions. Moreover, Monte Carlo transport codes often incorporate their own implementation of electronic stopping power. In this article, we compare recent stopping power publications to our large collection of experimental stopping data for positive ions, in order to test their validity. We consider stopping codes by Barbui et al., Javanainen, and Diwan et al., and also the stopping power descriptions built into Monte Carlo transport codes: “Bethe” in libdEdx/SHIELD-HIT, Geant4-DNA, FLUKA, and MNCPX. We use graphical comparisons for significant single ion/target combinations, and we use our statistical program “Judge” to analyse larger data sets for those ions and targets where many experimental results are available. Only solid elemental targets are considered.The performance of the codes is evaluated in terms of how well they describe the available experimental data, in comparison with previously analyzed programs. Although interesting new approaches have been used in some of the codes, both SRIM and MSTAR still seem to be slightly better at reproducing the available data.