Measurements and simulations of Cherenkov light in lead fluoride crystals

Aug, 2001
18 pages
Published in:
  • Nucl.Instrum.Meth.A 465 (2001) 318-328
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Abstract:
The anticipated use of more than one thousand lead fluoride (PbF2) crystals as a fast and compact Cherenkov calorimeter material in a parity violation experiment at MAMI stimulated the investigation of the light yield (L.Y.) of these crystals. The number of photoelectrons (p.e.) per MeV deposited energy has been determined with a hybrid photomultiplier tube (HPMT). In response to radioactive sources a L.Y. between 1.7 and 1.9 p.e./MeV was measured with 4% statistical and 5% systematic error. The L.Y. optimization with appropriate wrappings and couplings was investigated by means of the HPMT. Furthermore, a fast Monte Carlo simulation based on the GEANT code was employed to calculate the characteristics of Cherenkov light in the PbF2 crystals. The computing time was reduced by a factor of 50 compared to the regular photon tracking method by implementing detection probabilities as a three-dimensional look-up table. For a single crystal a L.Y. of 2.1 p.e./MeV was calculated. The corresponding detector response to electrons between 10 and 1000 MeV was highly linear with a variation smaller than 1%.
Note:
  • This work is part of the doctoral thesis of P. Achenbach
  • calorimeter: electromagnetic
  • Cherenkov counter: crystal
  • lead: fluorine
  • radiation: yield
  • photomultiplier
  • parity: violation
  • numerical calculations: Monte Carlo
  • Mainz Linac
  • thesis