Energy resolution and non-proportionality of scintillation detectors – new observations

Abstract

Abstract According to the present knowledge, the non-proportionality of the light yield of scintillators appears to be the fundamental limitation of energy resolution and it is related to the intrinsic properties of the crystals. However, several observations collected in the last 10 years suggest more complex processes in the scintillators. First, the study of undoped NaI and CsI crystals showed that the non-proportionality and energy resolution are very sensitive to the accidental traces of impurities. For some crystals, like CsI(Tl), ZnSe(Te), undoped NaI at liquid nitrogen temperature and finally for NaI(Tl) at temperatures reduced below 0 °C, an influence of slow components of the light pulses on energy resolution and non-proportionality is observed. A common conclusion of these observations is the fact that the highest energy resolution, and particularly the intrinsic resolution measured with scintillators, characterized by two components of the light pulse decay, is obtainable when the spectrometry equipment integrates the whole light of both components. In the limiting case, the afterglow could be considered also as a very slow component destroying the energy resolution. The aim of this work is to summarize all above observations looking for their origin.