A summary on an investigation of GAGG:Ce afterglow emission in the context of future space applications within the HERMES nanosatellite mission
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Proc. SPIE 11444, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2020: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 1144493 |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2561053 |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.2561053 |
| Keywords | Scintillators; GAGG:Ce; afterglow; space missions; nanosatellites; Near-Earth radiation environ- ment |
| Description | 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. |
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