<title>Measurements of optical properties of waveshifting optical fiber for liquid scintillator hadron calorimetry</title>

Abstract

Measurements have been made on optical properties of Bicron BCF-91 waveshifting optical fiber. This fiber is proposed as a means of converting UV and blue light emitted from liquid scintillator when exposed to ionizing radiation. The conversion is accomplished by coiling the fiber in a reservoir filled with liquid scintillator and coated internally with reflective paint. UV and blue light is absorbed by the waveshifting dyes in the fiber and reemitted light is channeled into the core of the fiber and output to photo detectors. It has been proposed to outfit the hadron calorimeter sub-system of the GEM detector to be built at the Superconducting Super Collider with 800,000 separate liquid scintillator/waveshifting fiber cells. The measurements described in this work deal with the optical performance of the fiber: spectral emission, response as a function of input wavelengths, response as a function of irradiated length, propagation length and output numerical aperture. The theoretical response of an ideal calorimeter cell is studied based on the results of the measurements presented in this paper.