Fiber optics based ion discriminator

摘要

Radiation detector capable of discriminating between different species of high energy ions is of great demand by aerospace and high energy physics communities. We propose the optical fiber-based real time ion detector and discriminator, which can have long lifetime in radiation environment, can be compact and low production cost. The basis of detector's principle of operation is the strong dependence of the pattern of energy dissipation with ion penetration depth in the matter on the type of the ion. Another key phenomenon enabling our fiber optic based detector is the refractive index change in optical fiber in the vicinity of particle track due to the dissipated energy. These two effects provide the opportunity to measure the energy dissipation versus penetration depth as well as total energy released simultaneously in real time with a single detector. Thus, different types of ions can be distinguished by measuring total energy dissipated and energy dissipation versus distance. To discriminate between ions species we propose to use measurement of the Bragg peak position. Total energy dissipated by the particle in the detector material and determination of the Bragg peak position gives the full information on the kind of the incident ion as confirmed via simulations.