Research Projects

Ionizing radiation is used in radiotherapy as a cancer treatment. The major cause of damage to cancer cells is the secondary low-energy electrons (LEEs) produced during radiotherapy. Radiosensitizers are incubated in the tumor before irradiation to enhance the efficiency of radiotherapy. The secondary LEEs interact with the radiosensitizer, and dissociation or autodetachment processes may occur. The main objective of our project is to investigate these processes with the local complex potential-based time-dependent wave packet (LCP-TDWP) approach for some radiosensitizers. In the LCP-TDWP approach, the potential energy curves will be required to generate eigenfunctions for neutral and anionic species by the Fourier grid Hamiltonian (FGH) method. The nuclear motion of metastable anion takes place in complex potential [W_(A¯) (R) = E_(A¯) (R)- i/2 Γ_(A¯) (R)]. Since the width function [Γ_(A¯) (R)] is unknown for most radiosensitizers, we will model Γ_(A¯) (R) by using proper benchmarking. The time-dependent Schrödinger equation can be solved using the standard Lanczos scheme and fast Fourier transformation technique to get the time propagation of the initial wavefunction. Further, the Fourier transform of the auto-correlation function will be performed to get a scattering cross-section [σ(E)].