Monte Carlo GEANT4-based application for in vivo RBE study using small animals at LNS-INFN preclinical hadrontherapy facility.

Preclinical studies represent an important step towards a deep understanding of the biological response to ionizing radiations. The effectiveness of proton therapy is higher than photons and, for clinical purposes, a fixed value of 1.1 is used for the relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of protons considered 1.1. Recent in vitro studies have reported that the RBE along the spread-out Bragg peak (SOBP) is not constant and, in particular, the RBE value increases on the distal part of SOBP. The present work has been carried-out in the perspective of a preclinical hadrontherapy facility at LNS-INFN and was focused on the experimental preparation of an in vivo study concerning the RBE variation along the SOBP. The main purpose of this work was to determine, using GEANT4-based Monte Carlo simulations, the best configuration for small animal treatments. The developed GEANT4 application simulates the proton-therapy beam line of LNS-INFN (CATANA facility) and allows to import the DICOM-CT images as targets. The RBE will be evaluated using a deterministic radiation damage like myelopathy as end-point. In fact, the dose at which the 50% of animals will show the myelopathy is supposed to be LET-dependent. In this work, we studied different treatment configurations in order to choose the best two that maximize the LET difference reducing as much as possible the dose released to healthy tissue. The results will be useful to plan hadrontherapy treatments for preclinical in vivo studies and, in particular, for the future in vivo RBE studies.

Wideband saturable absorption in few-layer molybdenum diselenide (MoSe2) for Q-switching Yb-, Er- and Tm-doped fiber lasers.

We fabricate a free-standing molybdenum diselenide (MoSe2) saturable absorber by embedding liquid-phase exfoliated few-layer MoSe2 flakes into a polymer film. The MoSe2-polymer composite is used to Q-switch fiber lasers based on ytterbium (Yb), erbium (Er) and thulium (Tm) gain fiber, producing trains of microsecond-duration pulses with kilohertz repetition rates at 1060 nm, 1566 nm and 1924 nm, respectively. Such operating wavelengths correspond to sub-bandgap saturable absorption in MoSe2, which is explained in the context of edge-states, building upon studies of other semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD)-based saturable absorbers. Our work adds few-layer MoSe2 to the growing catalog of TMDs with remarkable optical properties, which offer new opportunities for photonic devices.

Tunable Q-switched fiber laser based on saturable edge-state absorption in few-layer molybdenum disulfide (MoS2).

We fabricate a few-layer molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) polymer composite saturable absorber by liquid-phase exfoliation, and use this to passively Q-switch an ytterbium-doped fiber laser, tunable from 1030 to 1070 nm. Self-starting Q-switching generates 2.88 µs pulses at 74 kHz repetition rate, with over 100 nJ pulse energy. We propose a mechanism, based on edge states within the bandgap, responsible for the wideband nonlinear optical absorption exhibited by our few-layer MoS2 sample, despite operating at photon energies lower than the material bandgap.

Tm-doped fiber laser mode-locked by graphene-polymer composite.

We demonstrate mode-locking of a thulium-doped fiber laser operating at 1.94 µm, using a graphene-polymer based saturable absorber. The laser outputs 3.6 ps pulses, with ~0.4 nJ energy and an amplitude fluctuation ~0.5%, at 6.46 MHz. This is a simple, low-cost, stable and convenient laser oscillator for applications where eye-safe and low-photon-energy light sources are required, such as sensing and biomedical diagnostics.