Performance evaluation of Luxium Solutions BCF-XL wavelength-shifting fibers

TL;DR

This paper evaluates new Luxium Solutions BCF-XL wavelength-shifting fibers, demonstrating faster decay times and comparable attenuation lengths to Y-11, with improved timing performance when coupled with scintillators.

Contribution

It provides a performance comparison of newly developed single-clad BCF-XL fibers against established multi-clad Y-11 fibers, highlighting their advantages.

Findings

BCF-XL fibers have decay times around 2.1-2.4 ns, much faster than Y-11's 7.44 ns.

Attenuation lengths of BCF-XL fibers are comparable to Y-11 up to 3.2 meters.

When coupled with scintillators, BCF-XL fibers offer better time resolution with similar light yields.

Abstract

We evaluate the performance of single-clad wavelength-shifting fibers newly developed by Luxium Solutions, BCF-92XL, BCF-9929AXL, and BCF-9995XL and compare them with the multi-clad Kuraray Y-11 fiber. The BCF-XL fibers exhibit faster decay times (92XL: $2.10\pm0.01$ ns, 9929AXL: $2.10\pm0.02$ ns, 9995XL: $2.41\pm0.03$ ns) than Y-11 ($7.44\pm0.06$ ns). The attenuation lengths are comparable to that of Y-11 within the measurement range up to 3.2 m. When coupled to an EJ-204 plastic scintillator, the BCF-XL fibers achieve superior time resolution while maintaining light yields comparable to those expected for a single-clad Y-11 fiber.