Advanced scintillators for fast-timing applications

摘要

Gamma spectroscopy has been recast by a new generation of inorganic scintillators, mostly halide compounds, with large effective atomic number, excellent timing properties and a good energy resolution. The most prominent example is LaBr_3(Ce), commercially available for more than a decade. The impact of LaBr_3(Ce) in fast-timing experiments dedicated to measure nuclear state lifetimes has been tremendous. In fact, it has been the key player in the development of fast-timing with mixed arrays of HPGe detectors and fast scintillators. In this contribution we discuss the main parameters affecting the precision of timing measurements. We describe the evaluation of a newly-available LaBr_3(Ce + Sr) crystal for fast-timing applications, and compare the time and energy resolutions to a well-established LaBr_3(Ce) of the same size and shape. The measurements are performed using a fully-digital signal processing data acquisition system, which has been proven to yield even better results than standard analog acquisition systems.