English

Geant4-based technical simulation study of plastic scintillators for Positron Annihilation Lifetime Spectroscopy (PALS)

Instrumentation and Detectors 2024-12-24 v1 Nuclear Experiment

Abstract

The influence of detector setup configuration and scintillator material choice on spectrum quality in Positron Annihilation Lifetime Spectroscopy (PALS) is fundamentally acknowledged primarily by empirical observation. However, this study quantifies the effects of ultra-fast plastic scintillators (BC422Q) within a conventional collinear (180-degree) detector setup used in the laboratory using the Geant4 simulation toolkit. We examine the impact of the scintillator's dimension and geometry (truncated cone vs. cylinder) on the detection efficiency for specific gamma-ray energies (1274 keV and 511 keV) and their proportion of corrupt events such as backscattering or multiple detections. Results indicate that the selection of scintillator dimension and shape significantly enhances detection efficiency albeit with an increase in corrupt events. Furthermore, we investigate the influence on the instrument response function (IRF) of the scintillators, showing how truncated cones offer superior precision and, thus, a narrower IRF compared to cylindrical shapes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2412.17010,
  title  = {Geant4-based technical simulation study of plastic scintillators for Positron Annihilation Lifetime Spectroscopy (PALS)},
  author = {Dominik Boras},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.17010},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

20 pages, 16 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T20:45:37.466Z