Development of a fast radiation detector based on barium fluoride scintillation crystal

Abstract

Barium fluoride (BaF2) is an inorganic scintillation material used for the detection of X∕gamma radiation due to its relatively high density, equivalent atomic number, radiation hardness, and high luminescence. BaF2 has a potential capacity to be used in gamma ray timing experiments due to the prompt decay emission components. It is known that the light output from BaF2 has three decay components: two prompt of those at approximately 195 nm and 220 nm with a decay constant around 600-800 ps and a more intense, slow component at approximately 310 nm with a decay constant around 630 ns which hinders fast timing experiments. We report here the development of a fast radiation detector based on a BaF2 scintillation crystal employing a special optical filter device, a multiple reflection multi-path ultraviolet region short-wavelength pass light guides (MRMP-short pass filter) by using selective reflection technique, for which the intensity of the slow component is reduced to less than 1%. The methods used for this study provide a novel way to design radiation detector by utilizing scintillation crystal with several emission bands.