Cryogenic semiconductor high-intensity radiation monitors

This paper describes a novel technique to monitor high-intensity particle beams by means of a semiconductor detector. It consists of cooling a semiconductor detector down to cryogenic temperature to suppress the thermally generated leakage current and to precisely measure the integrated ionization signal. It will be shown that such a device provides very good linearity and a dynamic range wider than is possible with existing techniques. Moreover, thanks to the Lazarus effect, extreme radiation hardness can be achieved providing in turn absolute intensity measurements against precise calibration of the device at low beam flux.