On-line monitoring of gamma irradiated perfluorinated polymer optical fiber

摘要

In this paper, we present the first results regarding the on-line monitoring of gamma-ray exposure effects on a commercial multi-mode perfluorinated polymer optical fiber (PF-POF), type GigaPOF-50SR from Chromis Fiberoptics. Our focus was to evaluate on-line the radiation induced attenuation (RIA) over a wide spectral range (320 nm - 1700 nm), in order to assess the fiber's radiation hardness and its possible use in radiation detection. An Ocean Optics QE65000 high sensitivity spectrometer and a StellarNet near-IR spectrometer were used to cover the spectral ranges 200 nm - 1μm and 900 nm - 1.6 μm, respectively. Electron paramagnetic resonance was used to monitor the recovery of the irradiation induced centers at room temperature. The study indicated that the optical fiber can be used as radiation monitor at low dose rates by measuring the attenuation in the UV, while higher dose rates irradiation can be observed by RIA monitoring at specific wavelengths in the visible spectral range.