Proton irradiation of plastic scintillator bars for POLAR-2

Abstract

POLAR-2, a plastic scintillator based Compton polarimeter, is currently under development and planned for a launch to the China Space Station in 2025. It is intended to shed a new light on our understanding of Gamma-Ray Bursts by performing high precision polarization measurements of their prompt emission. The instrument will be orbiting at an average altitude of 383 km with an inclination of 42° and will be subject to background radiation from cosmic rays and solar events. In this work, we tested the performance of plastic scintillation bars, EJ-200 and EJ-248M from Eljen Technology, under space-like conditions, that were chosen as possible candidates for POLAR-2. Both scintillator types were irradiated with 58 MeV protons at several doses from 1.89 Gy (corresponding to about 13 years in space for POLAR-2) up to 18.7 Gy, that goes far beyond the expected POLAR-2 life time. Their respective properties, expressed in terms of light yield, emission and absorption spectra, and activation analysis due to proton irradiation are discussed. Scintillators activation analyses showed a dominant contribution of ${\beta }^{+}$ decay with a typical for this process gamma-ray energy line of 511 keV.

19 pages, 14 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Background for a gamma-ray satellite on a low-Earth orbit
• Design and construction of the POLAR detector
• Development and science perspectives of the POLAR-2 instrument: a large scale GRB polarimeter
• Temperature dependence of radiation damage annealing of Silicon Photomultipliers
• Proton Irradiation of SiPM arrays for POLAR-2
• Gamma-Ray Polarization Results of the POLAR Mission and Future Prospects

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Optimizing the light output of a plastic scintillator and SiPM based detector through optical characterization and simulation: A case study for POLAR-2