A summary on an investigation of GAGG:Ce afterglow emission in the context of future space applications within the HERMES nanosatellite mission

• Autoři: DILILLO Giuseppe; CAMPANA Riccardo; ZAMPA Nicola; FUSCHINO Fabio; PAULETTA Giovanni; RASHEVSKAYA Irina; AMBROSINO Filippo; BARUZZO Marco; CAUZ Diego; CIRRINCIONE Daniela; CITOSSI Marco; CASA Giovanni Della; DI RUZZA Benedetto; GALGÓCZI Gábor; LABANTI Claudio; EVANGELISTA Yuri; ŘÍPA Jakub; VACCHI Andrea; TOMMASINO Francesco; VERROI Enrico; FIORE Fabrizio
• Rok publikování: 2021
• Druh: Článek ve sborníku
• Konference: Proc. SPIE 11444, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2020: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 1144493
• Fakulta / Pracoviště MU: Přírodovědecká fakulta
• www: https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2561053
• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.2561053
• Klíčová slova: Scintillators; GAGG:Ce; afterglow; space missions; nanosatellites; Near-Earth radiation environ- ment
• Popis: GAGG:Ce (Cerium-doped Gadolinium Aluminium Gallium Garnet) is a promising new scintillator crystal. A wide array of interesting features, such as high light output, fast decay times, almost non-existent intrinsic background and robustness, make GAGG:Ce an interesting candidate as a component of new space-based gamma-ray detectors. As a consequence of its novelty, literature on GAGG:Ce is still lacking on points crucial to its applicability in space missions. In particular, GAGG:Ce is characterized by unusually high and long-lasting delayed luminescence. This afterglow emission can be stimulated by the interactions between the scintillator and the particles of the near-Earth radiation environment. By contributing to the noise, it will impact the detector performance to some degree. In this manuscript we summarize the results of an irradiation campaign of GAGG:Ce crystals with protons, conducted in the framework of the HERMES-TP/SP (High Energy Rapid Modular Ensemble of Satellites - Technological and Scientific Pathfinder) mission. A GAGG:Ce sample was irradiated with 70 MeV protons, at doses equivalent to those expected in equatorial and sun-synchronous LowEarth orbits over orbital periods spanning 6 months to 10 years, time lapses representative of satellite lifetimes. We introduce a new model of GAGG:Ce afterglow emission able to fully capture our observations. Results are applied to the HERMES-TP/SP scenario, aiming at an upper-bound estimate of the detector performance degradation due to the afterglow emission expected from the interaction between the scintillator and the nearEarth radiation environment.

Související projekty

• MUNI Award in Science and Humanities 3