Response of BGO and CsI(Tl) scintillators to heavy ions

Abstract

Response of BGO and CSI(Tl) scintillators to ions heavier than helium has been studied at energies below 30 MeV/n. An argon beam was scattered from gold target. The reaction products, covering ions from lithium to argon, were identified by using the conventional ΔE - E method. A thin silicon surface barrier detector was used as an energy loss detector and a scintillator as a residual energy detector. The energies of incident nuclei were determined by using the signals from the calibrated ΔE detector, and the light yield of the scintillators was obtained from the observed pulse heights. Telescope consisting of a silicon transmission detector and either BGO of CsI(Tl) scintillators as a residual energy detector were found to have similar identification capabilities of heavy ions. The light output of BGO was found to be linear at all energies observed, except for the lightest nuclei, where some nonlinearity was apparent below about 6–7 MeV/n. The response of CsI(Tl) was linear for all ions above 6 MeV/n.