Large area liquid scintillation and Cerenkov counters

Abstract

A counter of 1 m2 area and 10 cm deep is described which uses medicinal paraffin as the scintillator solvent. Although only one-third as efficient as other liquid scintillators it is cheap and has a much higher flash point. Using two 5 in. photomultipliers the counter had a resolution of 62% for the cosmic ray peak. For comparison purposes a Cerenkov counter of similar area was studied. Using a wavelength shifter, which improved the performance by a factor of five, this counter has a comparable resolution but needs to be very much deeper than the scintillation counter.