Study of dsb: scintillation glass ceramics for calorimetry

Application of crystalline materials in detectors for ionizing radiation detectors has played a crucial role in the discovery of the properties of matter and promoted a continuous progress in the detecting technique. Future detector concepts at high-energy physics (HEP) experiments will require a tolerable level of radiation damage in particular caused by electromagnetic part of ionizing radiation and energetic hadrons: minor deterioration of the optical transmission, low level of afterglow and radio-luminescence. Heavy materials demonstrate sufficient damage under the hadronic part of the ionizing radiation [1, 2] excluding consideration for high energy experiments at future particle colliders. The disilicate of barium (BaO − SiO ) doped with Ce (DSB:Ce) is one of the new scintillation materials made from binary composition and obtained by standard glass production technology with a successive thermal annealing. It can be produced in bulk and fiber shapes. DSB:Ce glass has a slightly lower stopping power. Its density is 3.8 g/cm , its effective Z is 51 and its radiation length (X ) is 3.3 cm [3]. Therefore applications of DSB:Ce in calorimetry will most probably require an additional absorber. On the other hand, on the contrary to crystalline materials, the production of large quantities is relatively easy and the production costs are rather low. For the present study, nine large piece of DSB:Ce (20 × 20 × 100 mm ) were provided by Radiation Instruments and New Components (Belarus) to evaluate their scintillation properties and radiation hardness to gammairradiation. The non-uniformity of light output of each of the DSB:Ce samples was measured with γ-rays of 1.17 MeV and 1.33 MeV generated by respectively an 60 Co radioactive source. We estimate the light output for the best DSB:Ce sample to be around 40 phe/MeV, thus two times larger than the one of a PWO crystal at room temperature [4]. We also investigated the temperature dependence of the light output from -25 °C to +20 °C. [4]. The temperature dependence of the light yield LY(T) is on the level of 0.05 % which is 40 times less than in case of PbWO . Several samples were irradiated at the Radiation Center (Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany) using a strong Co source at a dose rate of 2Gy/min. The transmission was subsequently measured again and compared with transmission before the radiation. DSB:Ce has a very small temperature dependence of the light output. The radiation damage of new DSB: Ce scintillating glass quantified by the change of the optical transmission was investigated. Preliminary results indicate that by optimizing the raw material purity and the production parameter improvement of radiation damage could be obtained. Further optimization of raw material and production conditions are currently investigated. Therefore, DSB: Ce can be considered to be a prospective material for application in calorimetry.