Scintillation Spectrometers for Measuring the Total Energy of X-Ray Photons

Abstract

X-ray spectrometers are described that operate on the principle of totally absorbing the energy of an individual x-ray photon in a scintillator. Experiments with scintillators of xylene containing terphenyl, and of sodium iodide activated by thallium, show that detection efficiencies better than 80 percent and energy resolutions better than 10 percent are attainable in the x-ray energy range from ½ to 50 Mev. Monte Carlo calculations and crude scaling laws that simplify extrapolations to other size scintillators are discussed.