Gamma-Ray Induced Radiation Damage Up to 340 Mrad in Various Scintillation Crystals

Abstract

Because of their superb energy resolution and detection efficiency scintillation crystals are widely used in high energy and nuclear physics experiments. A crucial issue is radiation damage in crystals. We report an investigation on γ-ray induced radiation damage in various crystal scintillators of large size, including BaF <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> , BGO, CeF <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sub> , pure CsI, LSO/LYSO/LFS and PWO, with an integrated dose up to 340 Mrad and a dose rate up to 1 Mrad/h. Optical and scintillation properties of these crystal samples were measured before and after irradiations. The results show that pure CsI has good radiation hardness below 100 krad. BaF <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> , BGO and LYSO have good radiation hardness beyond 1 Mrad. In terms of light output degradation LYSO is clearly the best among all scintillation crystals.