Irradiation of matter

Many characterization and analysis methods involve irradiating matter with a beam of particles. These methods are often referred to as "nuclear", as most of them focus on the atomic nucleus, freeing us from its chemical environment. Figure 4 illustrates some of the particle-atom interactions commonly used in analysis.

Some of these interactions and their applications to analysis are the subject of a special article, so only the general principle is described here, with the reader being referred to the relevant article for further details (table 6...