  Fast wire scanners are today considered as part of standard instrumentation
in high energy synchrotrons. The extension of their use to synchrotrons working
at lower energies, where Coulomb scattering can be important and the transverse
beam size is large, introduces new complications considering beam heating of
the wire, composition of the secondary particle shower and geometrical
consideration in the detection set-up. A major problem in treating these
effects is that the creation of secondaries in a thin carbon wire by a
energetic primary beam is difficult to describe in an analytical way. We are
here presenting new results from a full Monte Carlo simulation of this process
yielding information on heat deposited in the wire, particle type and energy
spectrum of secondaries and angular dependence as a function of primary beam
energy. The results are used to derive limits for the use of wire scanners in
low energy accelerators.
