In this paper the growth of a 16mm diameter Ce-doped Tl$_2$NaYCl$_6$ and its characterization as a gamma-ray detector are reported. With a 16 mm dia. x 8 mm cylindrical sample, energy resolution of 4.1% (FWHM) at 662 keV and light yield of 27,800ph/MeV are measured. Decay times of 91 ns (34%), 462 ns (52%), and 2.1 microseconds (15%) are calculated. The x-ray excited emission spectrum exhibits bands that are similar to other Tl-based elpasolite scintillators like Tl$_2$NaYCl$_6$:Ce.
An approximation of the real line shape of a scintillation detector with a generalized gamma distribution is proposed. The approximation describes the ideal scintillation line shape better than the conventional normal distribution. Two parameters of the proposed function are uniquely defined by the first two moments of the detector response.
Scintillation produced in liquid xenon by alpha particles and gamma rays has been studied as a function of applied electric field. For back scattered gamma rays with energy of about 200 keV, the number of scintillation photons was found to decrease by 64+/-2% with increasing field strength. Consequently, the pulse shape discrimination power between alpha particles and gamma rays is found to reduce with increasing field, but remaining non-zero at higher fields.
This paper reports a series of measurements that characterize the directional dependence of the scintillation response of crystalline anthracene to incident DT neutrons, DD neutrons, Cs-137 gamma rays, and, for the first time, cosmic ray muons. The neutron measurements give the amplitude and pulse shape dependence on the proton recoil direction over one hemisphere of the crystal, confirming and extending previous results in the literature. In similar measurements using incident gamma rays, no directional effect is evident, and any anisotropy with respect to the electron recoil direction is con…
Plastic scintillation detectors represent an efficient, cost-effective, customizable solution for assessment of gamma radiation fields in the context of nuclear security, environmental radiation survey, radiological and nuclear incidents response (RNe) and dosimetry for radiation protection purposes. Solid state light readout technologies such as Silicon Photomultiplier diodes (SiPM) are characterized by low operational voltage, mechanical robustness, compact dimensions, and fast pulse rise-time. Due to these intrinsic advantages, Silicon Photomultiplier diodes have been progressively replacin…
First observation of liquid xenon scintillation due to alpha-particles and gamma-rays with a large area avalanche photodiode immersed in the liquid is reported. An energy resolution of 10% (FWHM) and a coincidence time resolution of less then 1 ns (FWHM) were measured with 5.5 MeV alpha-particles and 511 keV gamma-rays, respectively. The quantum efficiency of the photodiode for xenon scintillation light (wavelength 178 nm) is estimated to be ~100%.
The project involved the development of a precision radioactive Source-Positioning System to enable the absolute characterization of a gamma-ray Detector-Development Platform at the Division of Nuclear Physics at Lund University in conjunction with the Detector Group of the European Spallation Source. The gamma-ray radiation associated with an actinide-Beryllium source was mapped using a cerium bromide scintillation crystal coupled to photomultiplier tube at various relative source and detector configurations. The data obtained are used to determine the spatial and energy profiles of the neutr…
Scintillation detector has lower energy resolution for Gamma-ray as compared to semiconductor detector, better spectra analysis method is essential to traditional method. A model for describing the response function of scintillation detector over the range of incident Gamma-ray energies between 0.5 and 1.5 MeV has been established and applied to fitting radiation sources spectra. Each function form for describing the feature of Gamma-ray spectra are based on the analysis of fundamental interaction mechanism. These functions are combined to form a DRF model to fit experiment spectra by weighted…
Scintillation light from gamma ray irradiation in liquid xenon is detected by two Hamamatsu R9288 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) immersed in the liquid. UV light reflector material, PTFE, is used to optimize the light collection efficiency. The detector gives a high light yield of 6 photoelectron per keV (pe/keV), which allows efficient detection of the 122 keV gamma-ray line from Co-57, with a measured energy resolution of (8.8+/-0.6)% (sigma). The best achievable energy resolution, by removing the instrumental fluctuations, from liquid xenon scintillation light is estimated to be around 6-8% (…
Recent years getting progress in the area of micropixel avalanche photodiode makes them attractive as sensors for scintillation detectors. The performance of the scintillation detectors is strongly tied to the physical properties of MAPD. For this point of wives, we will investigate three types MAPD-3NK, MAPD-3NM and MAPD-3NM-II for possible use in a scintillation detector. Investigated avalanche photodiodes have the following parameters e.g low operation voltage (90V$<$U$<$50V), high pixel density (4000 pixel/mm^2), high photodetection efficiency (40%) and high gain (6*10^4). Gamma-ray detect…
A Discrete Fourier Transform Method (DFTM) for discrimination between the signal of neutrons and gamma rays in organic scintillation detectors is presented. The method is based on the transformation of signals into the frequency domain using the sine and cosine Fourier transforms in combination with the discrete Fourier transform. The method is largely benefited from considerable differences that usually is available between the zero-frequency components of sine and cosine and the norm of the amplitude of the DFT for neutrons and gamma-ray signals. Moreover, working in frequency domain natural…
Scintillation at cryogenic temperatures can give rise to detectors with particle discrimination for rare-event searches such as dark matter detection. We present time-resolved scintillation studies of Caesium Iodide (CsI) under excitation of both alpha and gamma particles over a long acquisition window of 1 ms to fully capture the scintillation decay between room temperature and 4 K. This allows a measurement of the light yield independent of any shaping time of the pulse. We find the light yield of CsI to increase up to two orders of magnitude from that of room temperature at cryogenic temper…
A digital pulse shape discrimination system based on a programmable module NI-5772 has been established and tested with EJ-301 liquid scintillation detector. The module was operated by means of running programs developed in LabVIEW with the sampling frequency up to 1.6GS/s. Standard gamma sources 22Na, 137Cs and 60Co were used to calibrate the EJ-301 liquid scintillation detector, and the gamma response function has been obtained. Digital algorithms for charge comparison method and zero-crossing method have been developed. The experimental results showed that both digital signal processing (DS…
A first comparison has been made between the pulse-shape discrimination characteristics of a novel $^{4}$He-based pressurized scintillation detector and a NE-213 liquid-scintillator reference detector using an Am/Be mixed-field neutron and gamma-ray source and a high-resolution scintillation-pulse digitizer. In particular, the capabilities of the two fast neutron detectors to discriminate between neutrons and gamma-rays were investigated. The NE-213 liquid-scintillator reference cell produced a wide range of scintillation-light yields in response to the gamma-ray field of the source. In stark …
We present measurements of nonproportionality in the scintillation light yield of bismuth germanate (BGO) for gamma-rays with energies between 6 keV and 662 keV. The scintillation light was read out by avalanche photodiodes (APDs) with both the BGO crystals and APDs operated at a temperature of approximately 90 K. Data were obtained using radioisotope sources to illuminate both a single BGO crystal in a small test cryostat and a 12-element detector in a neutron radiative beta-decay experiment. In addition one datum was obtained in a 4.6 T magnetic field based on the bismuth K x-ray escape peak…
In scintillation detector, scintillation crystals are typically made into 2-dimension modular array. The location of incident gamma-ray need be calibrated due to spatial response nonlinearity. Generally, position histograms, the characteristic flood response of scintillation detectors, are used for position calibration. In this paper, a position calibration method based on crystal position lookup table which maps the inaccurate location calculated by Anger logic to the exact hitting crystal position has been proposed, Firstly, position histogram is segmented into disconnected regions. Then cry…
This paper is devoted to the study of a degradation of CsI(Tl)crystals scintillation characteristics under irradiation with gamma-quanta at the uniformly distributed absorbed dose up to 3700 rad. The sample set consisted of 25 crystals of 30 cm long having a truncated pyramid shape and 30 rectangular crystals of the same length. A large difference in the light output deterioration caused by the radiation was observed for the samples of the same shape. A substantial dependence of the average light output loss from the sample shape is seen as well. On the other hand, the crystals from the same i…
The detection of primary scintillation light in combination with the charge or secondary scintillation signals is an efficient technique to determine the events t=0 as well as particle / photon separation in large mass TPC detectors filled with noble gases and/or condensed noble gases. The aim of this work is to demonstrate that costly photo-multipliers could be replaced by cheap novel photosensitive gaseous detectors: wire counters, GEMs or glass capillary tubes coupled with CsI photocathodes. We have performed systematic measurements with Ar, Kr and Xe gas at pressures in the range of 1-50 a…
Eight PbWO4 crystals produced for the electromagnetic calorimeter of the CMS experiment at LHC have been irradiated in a 20 GeV/c proton beam up to fluences of 5.4 E13 p/cm2. The damage recovery in these crystals, stored in the dark at room temperature, has been followed for over a year. Comparative irradiations with 60Co photons have been performed on seven other crystals using a dose rate of 1 kGy/h. The issue whether hadrons cause a specific damage to the scintillation mechanism has been studied through light output measurements on the irradiated crystals using cosmic rays. The correlation …
Samples from different materials typically used as optical windows or light guides in scintillation detectors were studied in a very low background environment, at the Canfranc Underground Laboratory, searching for scintillation. A positive result can be confirmed for natural quartz: two distinct scintillation components have been identified, not being excited by an external gamma source. Although similar effect has not been observed neither for synthetic quartz nor for methacrylate, a fast light emission excited by intense gamma flux is evidenced for all the samples in our measurements. These…
We report the measurement of the emission time profile of scintillation from gamma-ray induced events in the XMASS-I 832 kg liquid xenon scintillation detector. Decay time constant was derived from a comparison of scintillation photon timing distributions between the observed data and simulated samples in order to take into account optical processes such as absorption and scattering in liquid xenon. Calibration data of radioactive sources, $^{55}$Fe, $^{241}$Am, and $^{57}$Co were used to obtain the decay time constant. Assuming two decay components, $τ_1$ and $τ_2$, the decay time constant $τ…
Scintillation characteristics of undoped and Cu+-doped lithium tetraborate Li2B4O7 (LTB) were studied including optical transmittance, photoluminescence, radioluminescence for X- and gamma-rays, alpha/gamma ratio, and decay kinetics. The total time-integrated LYs in undoped and Cu+-doped LTB for X-rays are ~600 and ~760 ph/MeV (photons/MeV), respectively. The decay kinetics in undoped and Cu+-doped LTB are similar to each other. Typical decay spectra for pulsed X-rays can be fitted with four exponentials: for fast (t1~0.8 ns, t2~25-50 ns), medium (t3~300-400 ns), and slow (t4~20-30 ms) compone…
We report on the results of the positional-dependent pulse shape discrimination (PSD) parameter observed within a monolithic CLLB scintillation crystal. CLLB, a relatively novel inorganic scintillation crystal, is capable of PSD between gamma rays, neutrons, and alpha particles. In this work, we observed distinguishable differences in the pulse shapes for gamma-ray-induced events. The CLLB crystals used for this experiment are 5 cm (diameter) by 10 cm (length). By using monoenergetic 2.614 MeV photons from a set of thoriated welding rods and performing collimated scans along the length of the …
Gamma-ray and fast-neutron imaging was performed with a novel liquid xenon (LXe) scintillation detector read out by a Gaseous Photomultiplier (GPM). The 100 mm diameter detector prototype comprised a capillary-filled LXe converter/scintillator, coupled to a triple-THGEM imaging-GPM, with its first electrode coated by a CsI UV-photocathode, operated in Ne/5%CH4 cryogenic temperatures. Radiation localization in 2D was derived from scintillation-induced photoelectron avalanches, measured on the GPM's segmented anode. The localization properties of Co-60 gamma-rays and a mixed fast-neutron/gamma-r…
We have characterized two state-of-the-art solid-state photomultipliers, one by SensL, the other by Hamamatsu, coupled to scintillators by Saint-Gobain Crystals in the -25 to 50 degrees C temperature range. At room temperature, the energy resolution at 661.6 keV measured with both detectors is worse than the resolution obtained when the crystals are coupled to a regular photomultiplier tube. Both the pulse height and pulse height resolution of the 661.6 keV gamma rays in the 137Cs spectrum vary strongly with temperature. The noise threshold determined from the 22Na spectrum increases quadratic…
A comprehensive model for explaining scintillation yield in liquid xenon is introduced. We unify various definitions of work function which abound in the literature and incorporate all available data on electron recoil scintillation yield. This results in a better understanding of electron recoil, and facilitates an improved description of nuclear recoil. An incident gamma energy range of O(1 keV) to O(1 MeV) and electric fields between 0 and O(10 kV/cm) are incorporated into this heuristic model. We show results from a Geant4 implementation, but because the model has a few free parameters, im…
Europium-doped TlSr2I5 (TSI), a new high light yield scintillator for gamma-ray detection, has been grown by the vertical Bridgman method. A 12mm and 16mm diameter boules of TSI is grown in a two-zone vertical furnaces. Samples extracted from the grown boule have been characterized for their scintillation properties. Energy resolution of < 3% (FWHM) at 662 keV and a gamma-ray light yield of approximately 54,000 Ph/MeV have been obtained. Decay times of 395 ns (89%) and 2.0 microseconds (11%) have been measured.
Very large thallium doped sodium iodide crystals operated underground and in very low background environment in the context of a dark matter search experiment have been used to determine scintillation components in the tens of ms range in the light pulse induced by different interacting particles: gammas/muons and alphas.
Presented here are first tests of a Gaseous Photomultiplier based on a cascade of Thick GEM structures intended for gamma-ray position reconstruction in liquid Argon. The detector has a MgF$_2$ window, transparent to VUV light, and a CsI photocathode deposited on the first THGEM. A gain of $8\cdot10^{5}$ per photoelectron and $\sim100\%$ photoelectron collection efficiency are measured at stable operation settings. The excellent position resolution capabilities of the detector (better than 100 $μ$m) at 100 kHz readout rate, is demonstrated at room temperature. Structural integrity tests of the…
For the first time secondary scintillation, generated within the holes of a thick gas electron multiplier (TGEM) immersed in liquid argon, has been observed and measured using a silicon photomultiplier device (SiPM). 250 electron-ion pairs, generated in liquid argon via the interaction of a 5.9KeV Fe-55 gamma source, were drifted under the influence of a 2.5KV/cm field towards a 1.5mm thickness TGEM, the local field sufficiently high to generate secondary scintillation light within the liquid as the charge traversed the central region of the TGEM hole. The resulting VUV light was incident on a…
The first domestic inorganic scintillator CLYC was grown in Beijing Glass Research Instituteusing the vertical Bridgman method. In this work, we evaluated the performance of this new CLYC crystal in terms of gamma-ray energy resolution and pulse shape discrimination(PSD)capability between neutrons and gamma-rays. The decay times occurred throughdifferent scintillation mechanisms were achievedby fitting decay functions to the neutron and gamma-ray waveform structures. We found an energy resolution of 4.5% for 662-keV gamma-rays and efficient neutron/gamma PSD withFoM 2.6. Under gamma-ray excita…
The properties of large volume cylindrical 3.5 x 8 inches (89 mm x 203 mm) LaBr3:Ce scintillation detectors coupled to the Hamamatsu R10233-100SEL photo-multiplier tube were investigated. These crystals are among the largest ones ever produced and still need to be fully characterized to determine how these detectors can be utilized and in which applications. We tested the detectors using monochromatic gamma-ray sources and in-beam reactions producing gamma rays up to 22.6 MeV; we acquired PMT signal pulses and calculated detector energy resolution and response linearity as a function of gamma-…
We demonstrate the linearity and stability of a gamma-ray scintillation detector comprised of a NaI(Tl) crystal and a scientific-grade CMOS camera. After calibration, this detector exhibits excellent linearity more than three decades of activity levels. Because the detector is not counting pulses, no dead-time correction is required. When high activity sources are brought into close proximity to the NaI crystal, several minutes are required for the scintillation to achieve a steady state. On longer time scales, we measure drifts of a few percent over several days. These instabilities have impo…
Scintillation characteristics of a thallium doped sodium iodide (NaI(Tl)) crystal with a dimension of 0.6 x 0.6 x 2 cm3 are studied by attaching a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) direct to the crystal over a temperature range from 93 to 300 K. The scintillation light output and decay time are measured by irradiating 59.54 keV gamma-rays from a 241Am source. We observed approximately 20% increase in light yield at 230K compared to that at the room temperature. At this condition, the NaI(Tl) crystal coupled with the SiPM can be a good candidate for future dark matter search detector.
This paper presents the results of the fast neutron irradiation (E$_n$ > 0.5MeV) of an EJ-276 scintillator performed in the MARIA research reactor with fluence up to 5.3$\times$10$^{15}$ particles/cm$^2$. In our work, four samples with size $ϕ$25.4~mm$\times$5~mm were tested. The changes in the light yield, emission and absorption spectrum and neutron/gamma discrimination using PuBe source before and after irradiation are presented. The figure of merit in neutron/gamma discrimination based on the charge integration method for different neutron fluences and different short gate integration time…
With the development of high-speed readout electronics, the digital pulse shape discrimination (PSD) methods have attracted the attention of more researchers, especially in the field of high energy physics and neutron detection. How to choose a PSD algorithm and corresponding data acquisition system (DAQ) naturally becomes a critical problem to settle down for the detection system designers. In this paper, the relationship between the classification performance of different PSD algorithms and digitizers' sampling properties (including sampling rate and the effective number of bits) has been re…
Strontium iodide doped with europium is a new scintillator material being developed as an alternative to lanthanum bromide doped with cerium for use in high energy astrophysical detectors. As with all scintillators, the issue of nonproportionality is important because it affects the energy resolution of the detector. In this study, we investigate how the nonproportionality of strontium iodide doped with europium changes as a function of temperature 16 deg. C to 60 deg. C by heating the strontium iodide doped with europium scintillator separate from the photomultiplier tube. In a separate exper…
In this paper we present a method of scintillation detector energy calibration using the gamma-rays. The technique is based on the Compton scattering of gamma-rays in a scintillation detector and subsequent photoelectric absorption of the scattered photon in the Ge-detector. The novelty of this method is that the source of gamma rays, the germanium and scintillation detectors are immediately arranged adjacent to each other. The method presents an effective solution for the detectors consisting of a low atomic number materials, when the ratio between Compton effect and photoelectric absorption …
In gamma ray imaging, a scintillation crystal is typically used to convert the gamma radiation into visible light. Photosensors are used to transform this light into measurable signals. Several types of photosensors are currently in use depending on the application, most known are Position Sensitive Photomultiplier Tubes (PSPMT) or arrays of Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs). There have been investigations towards reducing the number of output signals from those photosensors in order to decrease system costs and complexity without impacting system performance. We propose here two different redu…
We developed a 12-liter volume neutron detector filled with the liquid scintillator EJ301 that measures neutrons in an underground laboratory where dark matter and neutrino experiments are located. The detector target is a cylindrical volume coated on the inside with reflective paint (95% reflectivity) that significantly increases the detector's light collection. We demonstrate several calibration techniques using point sources and cosmic-ray muons for energies up to 20 MeV for this large liquid scintillation detector. Neutron-gamma separation using pulse shape discrimination with a few MeV ne…
We have built a gas-phase argon ionization detector to measure small nuclear recoil energies (< 10 keVee). In this paper, we describe the detector response to X-ray and gamma calibration sources, including analysis of pulse shapes, software triggers, optimization of gas content, and energy- and position-dependence of the signal. We compare our experimental results against simulation using a 5.9-keV X-ray source, as well as higher-energy gamma sources up to 1332 keV. We conclude with a description of the detector, DAQ, and software settings optimized for a measurement of the low-energy nuclear …
Simulation studies have been carried out to explore the ability to discriminate between single-site and multi-site energy depositions in large scale liquid scintillation detectors. A robust approach has been found that is predicted to lead to a significant statistical separation for a large variety of event classes, providing a powerful tool to discriminate against backgrounds and break important degeneracies in signal extraction. This has particularly relevant implications for liquid scintillator searches for neutrinoless double beta decay ($0νββ$) from $^{130}$Te and $^{136}$Xe, where it is …
A neutron detector based on EJ301 liquid scintillator has been employed at EAST to measure the neutron energy spectrum for D-D fusion plasma. The detector was carefully characterized in different quasi-monoenergetic neutron fields generated by a 4.5 MV Van de Graaff accelerator. In recent experimental campaigns, due to the low neutron yield at EAST, a new shielding device was designed and located as close as possible to the tokamak to enhance the count rate of the spectrometer. The fluence of neutrons and gamma-rays was measured with the liquid neutron spectrometer and was consistent with 3He …
Dual phase Xenon Time Projection Chambers (XeTPCs) are being used by several experiments as a promising technique for direct detection of dark matter. We report on the design and performance of a small 3-D sensitive dual phase XeTPC. The position resolution is 2 mm in the center of detector, limited by the hole size of the mesh at the proportional scintillation region. An energy resolution of 1.6%(σ /E) for 662 keV gamma rays is achieved by combining the ionization and scintillation signals at a drift field of 0.5 kV/cm. This represents the best energy resolution achieved among liquid xenon de…
In the work presented here we built and evaluated a single-channel neutron detection unit consisting of a ZnS:$^6$LiF scintillator with embedded WLS fibers readout by a SiPM. The unit has a sensitive volume of 2.4 x 2.8 x 50 mm$^3$; 12 WLS fibers of diameter 0.25 mm are uniformly distributed over this volume and are coupled to a 1 x 1 mm$^2$ active area SiPM. We report the following performance parameters: neutron detection efficiency $\sim 65\,$% at $1.2\,Å$, background count rate $< 10^{-3}$ Hz, gamma-sensitivity with $^{60}$Co source $< 10^{-6}$, dead time $\sim 20\,μ$s, multi-count ratio $…
A light-yield calibration of an NE 213A organic liquid scintillator detector has been performed using both monoenergetic and polyenergetic gamma-ray sources. Scintillation light was detected in a photomultiplier tube, and the corresponding pulses were subjected to waveform digitization on an event-by-event basis. The resulting Compton edges have been analyzed using a Geant4 simulation of the detector which models both the interactions of the ionizing radiation as well as the transport of scintillation photons. The simulation is calibrated and also compared to well-established prescriptions use…
Nonlinear scintillation effects in the intrinsic luminescence from Sc$_{1.318}$Y$_{0.655}$Si$_{1.013}$O$_{4.987}$ crystal excited by electrons and gamma-quanta
A high sensitivity Cardiac SPECT system using curved crystals with pinhole collimation was proposed previously (Dey, IEEE TNS 2012, Bhusal et al, Med. Phys. 2019). Here, we hypothesize that a high curvature hemi-ellipsoid detector results in measurable differences in light distribution from events at different depths in the crystal. This was tested by analyzing the scintillation light in hemi-ellipsoid detector using Monte-Carlo (Geant4) and evaluation of both the localization error at detector and the back-projected errors in object-space. We used Geant4 to simulate the propagation of scintil…
We studied the application of statistical reconstruction algorithms, namely maximum likelihood and least squares methods, to the problem of event reconstruction in a dual phase liquid xenon detector. An iterative method was developed for in-situ reconstruction of the PMT light response functions from calibration data taken with an uncollimated gamma-ray source. Using the techniques described, the performance of the ZEPLIN-III dark matter detector was studied for 122 keV gamma-rays. For the inner part of the detector (R<100 mm), spatial resolutions of 13 mm and 1.6 mm FWHM were measured in the …
We demonstrate the use of a convolutional neural network to perform neutron-gamma pulse shape discrimination, where the only inputs to the network are the raw digitised SiPM signals from a dual scintillator detector element made of 6LiF:ZnS(Ag) scintillator and PVT plastic. A realistic labelled dataset was created to train the network by exposing the detector to an AmBe source, and a data-driven method utilsing a separate PMT was used to assign labels to the recorded signals. This approach is compared to the charge integration and continuous wavelet transform methods and is found to provide su…
