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arXiv · 1707.03392

On the use of NaI scintillation for high stability nuclear decay rate measurements

Scott D. Bergeson·Michael J. Ware·Jeremy Hawk
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Abstract

We demonstrate the linearity and stability of a gamma-ray scintillation detector comprised of a NaI(Tl) crystal and a scientific-grade CMOS camera. After calibration, this detector exhibits excellent linearity more than three decades of activity levels. Because the detector is not counting pulses, no dead-time correction is required. When high activity sources are brought into close proximity to the NaI crystal, several minutes are required for the scintillation to achieve a steady state. On longer time scales, we measure drifts of a few percent over several days. These instabilities have important implications for precision determinations of nuclear decay rate stability.

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Scott D. Bergeson, Michael J. Ware, Jeremy Hawk. 2017-07-10. On the use of NaI scintillation for high stability nuclear decay rate measurements. https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.03392

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