Quantitative analysis of the energy distributions of electrons backscattered elastically from polyethylene

We present results of theoretical and experimental studies of the spectra of electrons backscattered elastically from polyethylene in the primary energy range between 1 and 5 keV. The experiments were performed using a high energy resolution electron spectroscopy. The theoretical interpretation is based on a Monte Carlo simulation of the recoil and Doppler effects. The separation between the carbon and hydrogen peak in the energy distributions is shown as a function of the primary electron energy. The simulations give many partial distributions separately, depending on the number of elastic scatterings (single, and multiple scatterings of different types). We show our results for intensity ratios, peak shifts and broadenings. We also present detailed analytical calculations for the main parameters of a single scattering. Finally, we present a qualitative comparison with the experimental data. We find our resulting energy distribution of elastically scattered electrons to be in good agreement with our measurements.