Bremsstrahlung radiation? Essentially you fire a charged beam at a piece of metal, and you get various forms of radiation?
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#id--Particle_Beams--Bremsstrahlung
I.e. medical level particle stream hitting metal produces energy needed for dental X-Rays. Larger particle stream hitting metal produces through-container X-Rays.
Military grade charged particle beams hitting a ship will cause the metal to emit military grade X-Rays. So if you have a probe on the far side of an enemy ship and hit it with a charged particle beam, it can view the X-Rays and watch the crew on the targeted ship collapse and die from the X-Rays.
Todd Kes
(Thank you Atomic Rockets - http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/)
--- On Fri, 3/9/12, Tim O'Reilly wrote:
Shadow wrote in part:"You don't want heavy stuff like lead because they high energy
particles will create *multiple* lower energy particles when they hit
a nucleus. These result in *higher* radiation doses!" This is the working principle behind "neutron" bombs ... a 'small' a-bomb triggers the enhanced nuke which then does nasty things of metal in the area - which thoughts in turn may lead to ships being constructed of ceramics, poly, and other attempts to reduce too much metal ...Tim