학술논문

A γ-Ray Detector Based on a 3” LaBr3:Ce:Sr Crystal With SiPM Readout for 80 keV–16 MeV Energy Range With Position Sensitivity for Doppler Correction
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on. 70(10):2337-2343 Oct, 2023
Subject
Nuclear Engineering
Bioengineering
Detectors
Gain control
Crystals
Doppler effect
Energy resolution
Lead
Physics
Doppler correction
lanthanum bromide
relativistic Doppler broadening
scintillators
silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs)
Language
ISSN
0018-9499
1558-1578
Abstract
We report the validation in an extended energy range (80 keV– $\simeq 16$ MeV) of the GAMMA detector, a high-dynamic range, high-resolution, gamma-ray spectrometer for nuclear physics applications based on a 3 co-doped lanthanum bromide (LaBr3:Ce:Sr) crystal (73 ph/keV conversion efficiency, 25 ns decay time) coupled to 144 NUV-HD silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). The detector shows state-of-the-art energy resolution along the entire range thanks to the automatic gain switching feature [adaptive gain control (AGC)] of the custom application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) employed in the system. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that SiPMs have been used to measure such high energy together with a wide dynamic range and excellent energy resolution (2.7% at 662 keV). In addition, the pixelated nature of the SiPMs detectors, combined with machine learning (ML) algorithms, can be exploited to reconstruct the position of the first interaction of the gamma rays inside the scintillation crystal. Previous measurements with a 137Cs collimated source have achieved a spatial resolution better than 2 cm. This performance in position sensitivity has been used to compensate for the relativistic Doppler broadening effects of gamma rays at 15.110(3) MeV emitted by a carbon nucleus moving at relativistic speed (v/c $\simeq ~0.05$ ) resulting from a boron-on-deuterium reaction, improving the FWHM resolution of the peak by 15%, which is in agreement with the theoretical expectation.