Modeling of Radiation Transport

In the application of nuclear radiation, the problem of the transport of photons and neutral or charged particles through the matter is central for understanding the physics of the process, for a correct interpretation of the measurement and for a convenient choice of instrumental operating conditions. This paper, in the first part, is intended as a survey of the genesis of the transport equations, which describe the phenomenon of the diffusion of the particles. With a regressive procedure, it is possible to obtain the commonly used transport equations directly from Liouville equation; the approximations that must always been involved can be related to two dimensionless parameters if suitable dimesionless variables are introduced. In the second part, approximate solutions of Boltzmann and Fokker-Planck equations are given for particular physical situations of interest in x-ray spectroscopy and electron microprobe analysis.