Estimation of Fano factor in inorganic scintillators

Vaibhav Bora, Harrison H. Barrett, David Fastje, Eric Clarkson, Lars Furenlid, Abdelkader Bousselham, Kanai S. Shah, Jarek Glodo

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

The Fano factor of an integer-valued random variable is defined as the ratio of its variance to its mean. Correlation between the outputs of two photomultiplier tubes on opposite faces of a scintillation crystal was used to estimate the Fano factor of photoelectrons and scintillation photons. Correlations between the integrals of the detector outputs were used to estimate the photoelectron and photon Fano factor for YAP:Ce, SrI2:Eu and CsI:Na scintillator crystals. At 662 keV, SrI2:Eu was found to be sub-Poisson, while CsI:Na and YAP:Ce were found to be super-Poisson. An experiment setup inspired from the Hanbury Brown and Twiss experiment was used to measure the correlations as a function of time between the outputs of two photomultiplier tubes looking at the same scintillation event. A model of the scintillation and the detection processes was used to generate simulated detector outputs as a function of time for different values of Fano factor. The simulated outputs from the model for different Fano factors was compared to the experimentally measured detector outputs to estimate the Fano factor of the scintillation photons for YAP:Ce, LaBr3:Ce scintillator crystals. At 662 keV, LaBr3:Ce was found to be sub-Poisson, while YAP:Ce was found to be close to Poisson.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)72-86
Number of pages15
JournalNuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment
Volume805
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2016

Keywords

  • Fano factor
  • Inorganic scintillators
  • Photon statistics
  • Renewal point process

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Nuclear and High Energy Physics
  • Instrumentation

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