Response of Polycrystalline Diamond Particle Detectors Measured with a High Intensity Electron Beam

Comprehensive understanding of beam losses in the LHC is required to ensure full machine protection and efficient operation. The existing BLM system using ionization chambers is not adequate to resolve losses with a time resolution below some 10 us. Ionization chambers are also not adequate to measure very large transient losses, e.g. beam impacting on collimators. Diamond particle detectors with bunch-by-bunch resolution have therefore been used in LHC to measure fast particle losses with a time resolution down to a level of single bunches. Diamond detectors have also successfully been used for material damage studies in other facilities, e.g. HiRadMat at the CERN-SPS. To fully understand their potential, such detectors were characterized with an electron beam at the BTF in LNF INFN Italy, with bunch intensities from 10³ to 10⁹ electrons. The detector response and efficiency has been measured with a 50 Ω and a 1 Ω read-out system. This paper describes the experimental setup and the results of the experiment. In particular, the responses of three samples of 100 um single-crystalline diamond detectors and two samples of 500 um polycrystalline diamond detectors are presented.