Study of a small scale position-sensitive scintillator detector for γ-ray spectroscopy

Abstract

Precision measurement of the energy and direction of gamma-rays plays a key role in many fields such as medical imaging, nuclear spectroscopy, and astrophysics. In astrophysics position sensitive gamma-ray detectors are used to study diffuse and point-like sources. These space-born gamma-ray telescopes, however, are mainly based on large arrays of detectors which are expensive, complex, and take long time to build. A different approach is the use of detector with similar energy and angular resolution, but small enough to be deployed on nanosatellites. We research a design based on monolithic scintillator and multi-pixel photo-sensor. At first we are focused on characterization of CeBr3 scintillator detectors. Bench test experiments were performed with CeBr3 crystal with square surfaces and thicknesses of 10 mm and 25 mm. The crystals were coupled to a single-anode PMT and the outcome compared to Geant4 simulation.