A spectrometer for ultrashort gamma-ray pulses with photon energies greater than 10 MeV

Behm, K. T. and Cole, J. M. and Joglekar, A. S. and Gerstmayr, E. and Wood, J. C. and Baird, C. D. and Blackburn, T. G. and Duff, M. and Harvey, C. and Ilderton, A. and Kuschel, S. and Mangles, S. P. D. and Marklund, M. and McKenna, P. and Murphy, C. D. and Najmudin, Z. and Poder, K. and Ridgers, C. P. and Sarri, G. and Samarin, G. M. and Symes, D. and Warwick, J. and Zepf, M. and Krushelnick, K. and Thomas, A. G. R. (2018) A spectrometer for ultrashort gamma-ray pulses with photon energies greater than 10 MeV. Review of Scientific Instruments, 89. 113303. ISSN 0034-6748 (https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5056248)

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Abstract

We present a design for a pixelated scintillator based gamma-ray spectrometer for non-linear inverse Compton scattering experiments. By colliding a laser wakefield accelerated electron beam with a tightly focused, intense laser pulse, gamma-ray photons up to 100 MeV energies and with few femtosecond duration may be produced. To measure the energy spectrum and angular distribution, a 33 × 47 array of cesium-iodide crystals was oriented such that the 47 crystal length axis was parallel to the gamma-ray beam and the 33 crystal length axis was oriented in the vertical direction. Using an iterative deconvolution method similar to the YOGI code, modeling of the scintillator response using GEANT4 and fitting to a quantum Monte Carlo calculated photon spectrum, we are able to extract the gamma ray spectra generated by the inverse Compton interaction.