Radiation-Hard Fast Scintillation Counterfor Heavy-Ion Beam Diagnostics
Maxim Saifulina,b,1, P.Boutachkovb,2, E.Gorokhovac, P.Rodnyid, C.Trautmanna,b, I.Venevtsevd and B.Walasek-Höhneb
aTechnical University Darmstadt (Darmstadt, Germany), bGSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research (Darmstadt, Germany), cJoint Stock Company "Research and Production
Corporation S.I. Vavilova" (St.Petersburg, Russia), dPeter the Great Polytechnic University (St.Petersburg, Russia)

Summary
The prototype detector has been developed for beam diagnostics at high-energy beam lines of the SIS18 synchrotron at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research GmbH. The
new detector consists of multiple ZnO(In) scintillating ceramics tiles stacked on the front and back sides of a borosilicate light guide. The performance of the detector was tested incomparison to a standard plastic scintillation detector with 300 MeV/u Ar, Au, Pb, and U ions. The prototype exhibits 100% counting efﬁciency and radiation hardness of a few ordersof magnitude higher than the standard plastic scintillation counter. Therefore, it provides an improved beam diagnostics tool for relativistic heavy-ion beam measurements.

Heavy-ion beam intensity measurements at GSI
GSI high-energy beam transport lines provide a huge variety of ion species from proton touranium at energies above 150 MeV/u for numerous physics experiments. The intensityof slowly extracted heavy ion beam from the SIS18 synchrotron is routinely measured
using Particle Detector Combinations (PDC). The damage occurs for detector materials
inserted into heavy ion beams. Therefore, radiation-hard materials are in demand.

Setup for the in-beam tests
Prototype detectorCollimator

Scintillating screen

Reference detector

Ion beam
CameraFig. 4: Photo of the experimental setup for the in-beam tests of the prototype at SIS18.

Detector response to heavy-ion beams
Fig. 1: Typical counting rates at which different detectors are used at the GSI facility (left).
Picture of the PDC assembly used for beam intensity measurements at GSI (right) 1,2.

Radiation hardness of zinc oxide scintillator

Fig. 2: Scintillation light spectrum of ZnO(In) ceramics at various ﬂuences (left). Criticalﬂuence of ZnO(In) and BC400 scintillator as deﬁned by the Birks–Black model (right)3–6.

Fig. 5: Detector response when ion beam passes through different layers of the active
volume (left). Detector response when ions hit different locations on the active area ofthe prototype (right).

Prototype detector design

Fig. 6: Change of the amplitude of the signal along horizontal (a) and vertical (b) direction
on the prototype active area (measurement vs. simulation)7.

Conclusion and outlook

Fig. 3: The prototype detector, consisting of an active volume, light guide, and photosensor(left). Photo of the active area of 45 mm × 45 mm (right). ZnO(In) scintillating tiles arestacked in 3×3 arrays in the front and back side of the BK7G18 glass.

Questions? Please contact:
1M.Saifulin@gsi.de 2 P.Boutachkov@gsi.de– The design and performance tests of a prototype radiation-hard fast scintillation detector
were successfully conducted at GSI.
– We observed a spatial dependency of the amplitude of the prototype signal when the ion
beam hits different positions on the active area, that is due to the change of scintillationlight transmission efﬁciency through the BK7G18 light guide.
– Further investigations are required to eliminate the spatial dependency of the lighttransmission efﬁciency through the BK7G18 light guide.

Literature: [1] P.Forck et al., Proc. DIPAC97, 1997, pp. 165–167; [2] P.Forck, JUAS Lect. Notes, 2011;[3] E.Gorokhova et al., J. Opt. Tech., 2015, pp. 837–842; [4] E.Gorokhova et al., J. Opt. Tech., 2018, pp. 729–737;[5] P.Boutachkov et al., Proc. IBIC22, 2022, pp. 515–518; [6] M.Saifulin et al., J. Appl. Phys., 2022, 195901;[7] http://www.opengatecollaboration.org;