Space charge in irradiated insulators: mirror method

A scanning electron microscope mirror method analysis has been developed to study the geometry of the trapped charge distribution within irradiated insulators. Several authors have noted that the optical geometrical approximation is an appropriate model to illustrate the mirror image formation. Nevertheless, some results have shown that it is not possible to use such model in the case of anisotropic material in which we can observe an elliptic mirror image. In this paper, we propose a new theoretical model to explain the formation of such elliptic mirror, which confirms the electric charge delocalization.