Study of properties of the plastic scintillator EJ-260 under irradiation with 150 MeV protons and 1.2MeV gamma-rays

Abstract

One of the most critical aspects for the application of a scintillation material in high energy physics is the degradation of properties of the material in an environment of highly ionizing particles in particular due to hadrons. There are presently several detector concepts in consideration being based on organic scintillator material for fast timing of charged particles or sampling calorimeters. We have tested different samples of the organic plastic scintillator EJ-260 produced by the company Eljen Technology (Sweetwater, TX, USA). The ongoing activity has characterized the relevant parameters such as light output, kinetics and temperature dependence. The study has focused on the change of performance after irradiation with 150 MeV protons up to an integral fluence of 5•1013 protons/cm2 as well as with a strong 60Co γ-source accumulating an integral dose of 100 Gy. The paper will report on the obtained results.