Design and characterisation of a YAG(Ce) calorimeter for proton Computed Tomography application

The design and the characterization of a calorimeter system, aimed at measuring the residual energy in a proton Computed Tomography (pCT) apparatus, is described. The calorimeter has a 6x6cm(2) active area to fully cover the tracker area of the pCT system, being 10 cm thick it is able to stop up to 200 MeV protons and sustain 1 MHz particle rate (average rate on the whole area). The YAG(Ce) scintillator is promising for charged particle detection applications where high-count rate, good energy resolution and compact photodiode readout, not influenced by magnetic fields, are of importance. The aim of this work is to show data acquired with proton beam energy up to 175 MeV and to discuss the performances of this calorimeter.