Hadronic vs Electromagnetic Pulse Shape Discrimination in CsI(Tl) for High Energy Physics Experiments

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that pulse shape discrimination in CsI(Tl) scintillators can effectively distinguish neutral hadrons from photons, utilizing a third scintillation component modeled through simulations for high energy collider experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel pulse shape modeling approach with a third scintillation component for hadron identification in CsI(Tl), integrated with GEANT4 simulations.

Findings

Pulse shape variations for hadrons can be modeled with an additional scintillation component.

The intensity of this component correlates with ionization energy loss.

Proof-of-concept shows potential for neutral hadron detection in collider experiments.

Abstract

Pulse shape discrimination using CsI(Tl) scintillators to perform neutral hadron particle identification is explored with emphasis towards application at high energy electron-positron collider experiments. Through the analysis of the pulse shape differences between scintillation pulses from photon and hadronic energy deposits using neutron and proton data collected at TRIUMF, it is shown that the pulse shape variations observed for hadrons can be modelled using a third scintillation component for CsI(Tl), in addition to the standard fast and slow components. Techniques for computing the hadronic pulse amplitudes and shape variations are developed and it is shown that the intensity of the additional scintillation component can be computed from the ionization energy loss of the interacting particles. These pulse modelling and simulation methods are integrated with GEANT4 simulation libraries and the predicted pulse shape for CsI(Tl) crystals in a $5 \times 5$ array of $5 \times 5 \times 30 \text{ cm}^3$ crystals is studied for hadronic showers from 0.5 and 1 GeV/c $K_L^0$ and neutron particles. Using a crystal level and cluster level approach for photon vs hadron cluster separation we demonstrate proof-of-concept for neutral hadron detection using CsI(Tl) pulse shape discrimination in high energy electron-positron collider experiments.