Scintillation Detectors for Charged Particles and Photons

As any radiation detector, a scintillator is an absorbing material, which has the additional property to convert into light a fraction of the energy deposited by ionizing radiation. Charged and neutral particles interact with the scintillator material through the well-known mechanisms of radiation interactions in matter described by many authors [1, 2]. Charged particles continuously interact with the electrons of the scintillator medium through Coulomb interactions, resulting in atomic excitation or ionization. Neutral particles will first have to undergo a direct interaction with the nucleus producing recoil protons or spallation fragments, which will then transfer their energy to the medium in the same way as primary charged particles.