Radiation Fields in High Energy Accelerators and their impact on Single Event Effects

Including calculation models and measurements for a variety of electronic components and their concerned radiation environments, this thesis describes the complex radiation field present in the surrounding of a high-energy hadron accelerator and assesses the risks related to it in terms of Single Event Effects (SEE). It is shown that this poses not only a serious threat to the respective operation of modern accelerators but also highlights the impact on other high-energy radiation environments such as those for ground and avionics applications. Different LHC-like radiation environments are described in terms of their hadron composition and energy spectra. They are compared with other environments relevant for electronic component operation such as the ground-level, avionics or proton belt. The main characteristic of the high-energy accelerator radiation field is its mixed nature, both in terms of hadron types and energy interval. The threat to electronics ranges from neutrons of thermal energies to GeV hadrons. Moreover, an overview is provided of the standard test approach used to characterize components to be utilized in a high-energy accelerator environment. A set of commercial microelectronic components are tested in a broad range of radiation environments and modeled in the scope of the FLUKA Monte Carlo code leading to the conclusion that, when applying standard test results to the estimation of the high-energy accelerator SEE rate, significant safety margins (quantified in the thesis) need to be applied to account for the risk of the very high-energy particles in the environment.