At high energy levels, which type of interaction predominates?

At high energy levels, Compton scattering predominates in interactions between photons and matter. This phenomenon occurs when a photon collides with a loosely bound outer electron in an atom, resulting in the transfer of some of the photon's energy to the electron while the photon is deflected at a new angle.

The reason Compton scattering is the leading interaction at higher energy levels is due to its dependency on the energy of the incoming photon and the electron binding energy. As photon energy increases, the likelihood of Compton scattering overtakes that of other interactions, such as the photoelectric effect, which is more significant at lower energies and is strongly dependent on the atomic number of the material being irradiated.

At very high photon energies, other interactions like pair production and photodisintegration can occur, but they typically require photon energies that are much greater than those at which Compton scattering is the dominant interaction. Pair production, for instance, requires a threshold energy of 1.022 MeV (the rest mass energy of an electron-positron pair), and photodisintegration involves high-energy gamma photons that can interact with a nucleus. These processes become relevant at energies even higher than those required for dominant Compton interactions.

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