Investigation of Thermoluminescence Efficiencies at High Laser Heating Rates

Abstract

Abstract The generation of heating rates, q, approaching 10,000 oC.s-1 is readily possible by heating thin-layer thermoluminescence dosemeter configurations with a CO2 laser. Because the signal to noise ratio is expected to be proportional to q, rapid laser heating has attracted some attention. On the negative side, the thermoluminescence efficiency is believed to decrease significantly in several TLD materials as q passes a certain value (e.g. 2 oC.s-1 in LiF:Mg,Ti and 0.5 oC.s-1 in CaF2:Mn). Therefore, a study of the thermoluminescence efficiency as a function of q is of great interest for applications of laser heating in thermoluminescence dosimetry. Such a study has, however, become possible only after techniques for the generation of reproducible laser beams with uniform intensity profiles were developed. In this paper we present experimental results obtained with LiF:Mg,Ti and CaSO4:Dy for q in the range from less than 4 oC.s-1 up to 5500 oC.s-1.