Speaker
Description
Precision measurement of the energy and the direction of gamma-rays plays a key role in many fields such as medical imaging, nuclear spectroscopy, and astrophysics. Present space gamma-ray telescopes are mainly based on large arrays of detectors which are expensive, necessarily complex, and take long time to build. A different approach is the use of detector with similar energy and direction resolution, but small enough to be deployed on a nanosatellite.
We research$^1$ a solution based on a monolithic scintillator and a multipixel photon sensor. The first stage of our study is focused on characterising inorganic scintillators of CeBr$_3$ and 256 channel multianode PMT. The response of CeBr$_{3}$ was obtained with a single anode PMT. The energy resolution for different material thickness was obtained and compared. A prototype of a single layer detector with CeBr$_3$ scintillator and a 256 channel multianode PMT was constructed exploiting 3D printing technology. The individual channel responses of the multipixel photon detector coupled to the CeBr$_3$ scintillator are being studied. The current results and challenges will be discussed.
$^1$The activities are performed at the University of Sofia and supported by the Bulgarian National Science Fund under contract DN18/17, project NDeGRA "Novel Detectors for Gamma-Ray Astronomy".
