Sound and light from fractures in scintillators

Abstract

Prompted by intriguing events observed in certain particle-physics searches for rare events, we study light and acoustic emission simultaneously in some inorganic scintillators subject to mechanical stress. We observe mechanoluminescence in ${Bi}_4{Ge}_3{O}_{12}$, ${CdWO}_4$ and ${ZnWO}_4$, in various mechanical configurations at room temperature and ambient pressure. We analyze how the light emission is correlated to acoustic emission during fracture. For ${Bi}_4{Ge}_3{O}_{12}$, we set a lower bound on the energy of the emitted light, and deduce that the fraction of elastic energy converted to light is at least $3\times 10^{-5}$.

References in corpus (4)

• Results from 730 kg days of the CRESST-II Dark Matter Search
• Statistical properties of microcracking in polyurethane foams under tensile test, influence of temperature and density
• Surface roughness interpretation of 730 kg days CRESST-II results
• Fractoluminescence characterization of the energy dissipated during fast fracture of glass

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• A Multi-Channel Setup to Study Fractures in Scintillators