Measurements of the Birks' coefficient of GAGG:Ce using hard X-rays

Abstract

Inorganic scintillators continue to be widely used within astrophysical X-ray and gamma-ray detectors. This is in part thanks to the development of new scintillators, such as GAGG:Ce, as well as the availability of new scintillator readout sensors such as Silicon Photomultipliers and Silicon Drift Detectors. In order to use such scintillator materials for spectrometry or polarimetry, a detailed understanding of their response is important. One parameter that can affect the scintillator performance, particularly at lower photon energies, is their Birks' coefficient, which correlates the relative light yield to the ionization energy density. While for many high-Z inorganic scintillators this effect can be ignored, for GAGG:Ce this appears to not be the case. Here we provide a measurement of the Birks' coefficient for GAGG:Ce using data from a detector irradiated in the 20-80~keV energy range at the LARIX-A X-ray beam in Ferrara, Italy. While the effects due to Birks' law are visible below 30 keV, they also significantly influence the performance of GAGG:Ce performance near one of the K-edges, affecting both the measured gain and the energy resolution. Here, we use beam test data to derive the Birks' coefficient from GAGG:Ce. The results indicate that for usage in hard X-ray and soft gamma-ray missions, this coefficient has a significant effect on the measurements.