Light yield and radiation hardness studies of scintillator strips with a filler

TL;DR

This study investigates the light yield and radiation hardness of long polystyrene scintillator strips with WLS fibers filled with optical filler, aiming to improve detection efficiency and durability in high-energy physics detectors.

Contribution

It provides new data on the light yield enhancement and radiation resistance of scintillator strips with optical fillers, using long strips and various radiation sources.

Findings

Increased light yield with optical filler compared to unfilled strips

Demonstrated radiation hardness of fillers under neutron irradiation

Validated performance with cosmic muons and radioactive sources

Abstract

Detectors based on polystyrene scintillator strips with WLS fiber readout are widely used to register charged particles in many high-energy physics experiments. The fibers are placed into grooves or holes along the strip. The detection efficiency of these devices can be significantly increased by improving the optical contact between the scintillator and the fiber by adding an optical filler into the groove/hole. This work is devoted to the study of the light yield of a 5-m-long scintillator strip with a 1.2-mm-diameter Kuraray Y11(200)~MC WLS fiber inserted into the strip's co-extruded hole filled with synthetic silicon resin SKTN-MED(E). The light yield was studied using cosmic muons and a $^{60}$Co radioactive source. Radiation hardness study of viscous fillers and short strip samples were performed on the IBR-2 pulsed research reactor of fast neutrons at JINR.