Systematic study of particle quenching in organic scintillators

Abstract

Among the different factors that affect measurements by organic scintillators, the majority of attention has been focused on those related to the scintillator (i.e., ionization, chemical, color and optical quenching), and less attention has been paid to the loss of energy before the particle (i.e., alpha or beta) arrives at the scintillator (i.e., particle quenching). This study evaluates the effect of particle quenching in different scintillation methods (i.e., using two plastic scintillation microspheres (PSm1 and PSm2), liquid scintillator and gel scintillator) by measuring solutions that contain increasing concentrations of NaCl, BaCl2 and glycerin. The results show the importance of particle quenching in PSm measurements because detection efficiency decreases with increasing concentrations of the quenching component, although the spectrum position and external standard parameter remain constant. The results have shown evidence of particle quenching, although at a lower magnitude, in the liquid scintillation or gel scintillation measurements. Moreover, the use of two PSm with different diameters and salty compound that alters the equilibrium of the liquid and gel emulsions also exemplified the importance of the transmission of optical photons through different scintillation media (i.e., optical quenching). Improvement and deterioration of the optical conditions on the scintillation media is manifested as a movement of the spectrum to higher and lower energies, respectively. The results obtained with PSm were confirmed by Monte Carlo simulation.