DTCE: Computational Feasibility and an Experimental Proposal for Site-Resolved Collision Damage in Graphene

DTCE Description The Discrete Trajectory Collision Experiment (DTCE) is a computational feasibility study and experimental proposal for measuring site-resolved collision damage produced by controlled low-energy ion exposure of graphene. The program aims to connect incident particle conditions with spatially resolved structural changes and outgoing-particle observables. Its proposed experimental architecture combines controlled proton irradiation, suspended graphene targets, registered atomic-resolution imaging, and staged detection of projectile and carbon recoil channels. The atomic-row extension studies whether downstream carbon sites can exhibit interaction or damage while upstream sites remain occupied at readout. DTCE is designed as a model-discrimination experiment rather than an assumption of anomalous physics. Conventional mechanisms—including nuclear scattering, lattice motion, secondary recoil, charge exchange, defect migration, reconstruction, and detector effects—must be quantitatively modeled and calibrated. The proposal therefore uses staged implementation, explicit no-event and unresolved categories, conventional controls, and preregistered statistical tests. The study includes analytical beam-propagation and shadowing calculations, source-localization constraints, screened ion–carbon scattering benchmarks, and 672 finite-graphene simulation trajectories under two incomplete interaction models. These calculations establish computational feasibility benchmarks and identify important experimental uncertainties; they are not experimental measurements or predicted physical vacancy yields. A planned recoil module would jointly measure outgoing-projectile behavior, carbon emission, and retained structure. The broader DTCE program has independent value for testing low-energy ion–graphene collision and defect-retention models. It also provides a possible experimental platform for testing the companion Quantum Discrete-Step Trajectory Dynamics (QDST) framework, provided QDST first supplies a complete quantitative interaction law that produces distinguishable predictions. Companion theory: QDST — DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23009329DTCE: DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23009401 Authors: Daqian Zhang, GPT6 Astra, SBIL