Response of plastic scintillator detectors to heavy ions, Z ≤ 35, E ≤ 170 MeV

Abstract

The fluorescent response, L, of plastic scintillators such as NE102 has been measured for a variety of heavy ions, Z = 1-35, at near-normal incidence with energies ranging from a few MeV to over a hundred MeV. The response in general is non-linear with L ~ f(Z, A)E 1.6 in the region E/A < 15 MeV/amu. The light output is best described however, as a function of the ion range in the scintillator, R, with L oc Zt.22(R-O.O4Z), where R is in mg/cm 2. Such an expression also appears to describe the response of other scintillators, such as NaI(T1), for heavy ions. Scintillation efficiency, dL/dE, and specific fluorescence, dL/dx, have been deduced from the plastic scintillator data. These quantities do not appear to be simple functions of the ion energy loss, dE/dx. The results can be described using simple models which include the effects of secondary electrons, however.

A segmented position-sensitive plastic phoswich detector

“…t t em-1 also comes from a position calibration. A simple formula connecting the light output N with the energy of the incident particle is [7] N=P(Z,A)-0.63 eEY.…”

The response of scintillators to heavy ions-I. Plastics

“…This result was verified directly by Becchetti et al, 8 and gives encouragement to the hope that fits to these functions can be utilized by persons calibrating detector systems without having to obtain a large number of calibration poiots for each individual detector.…”

“…Refitting the combined data with the same functional form (but weighted equally for each data point rather than each ion, as was done in Ref. 8) gives the results of Row E in Table 1. Using this parametrization to predict the light outputs give the short dashed lines in Figure 3, which show improvement for .…”

Light charged particle emission in40Ar induced reactions on68Zn at 14.6, 19.6 and 35 MeV/nucleon

“…12, and the specific fluorescence of the NEll0 has been treated as suggested by Birks [13]. Empirical relationships exist to describe the energy E and Z, A dependences of the different ions as a function of their varying light output L We have used that of Bechetti et al [14] …”