Calculation of electron emission cross sections in proton-biomolecule collisions

Ion collisions with biologically relevant molecules have received considerable attention in recent years, in large parts because of their relevance in biomedical and other applications. We have developed an independent-atom-model (IAM) based description of ion-molecule and ion-cluster collisions that can be applied to these problems [1,2]. The model improves on the simple Bragg additivity rule by taking geometric screening corrections due to overlapping atomic cross sections into account. A pixel counting method (PCM) is used for the (exact) calculation of the screening corrections and the method is referred to as IAM-PCM. We have used the IAM-PCM to study the proton-impact induced net ionization of a variety of target systems, including DNA/RNA nucleobases and a number of amino acids. At the conference we will present an overview of our results and specifically discuss cross section scaling relations. [1] H. J. L\"udde {\it et al.}, Eur. Phys. J. D {\bf 70}, 82 (2016). [2] H. J. L\"udde {\it et al.}, Eur. Phys. J. B {\bf 91}, 99 (2018).