TABLE OF CONTENTS Let us define, at first, the yield or efficiency of the thermoluminescent emission, ?, from a material having a mass m, as the ratio between the energy, ?, released as light from the material itself, and the mass m multiplied by the absorbed dose D [1]:
| (1) |  |
In the range where the efficiency ? is constant, there is a linear relationship between the TL signal, M, and the absorbed dose, D:
| (2) |  |
where k is a constant.
It is important in any thermoluminescent dosimetric application to have, if it is possible, a linear relationship between the TL emission and the absorbed dose. The linearity zone, if exists, is more or less depending on the material as well as on the reader.
A typical first-order relationship can be written as [2]
| (3) |  |
The linearity range, as already mentioned, depends on the particular thermoluminescent material. The plot of Eq.(3) is a straight line with slope a and intercept b on the Y-axis.
The physical meaning of the x and y variables, when using Eq.(3) to describe the TL yield as a function of dose, are:
the independent variable x represents the absorbed dose D received by the TL dosimeter,
the depending variable y is the TL light emitted by the dosimeters irradiated at the dose D; it is expressed in reader units,
the slope a
