Measurements of Photon Mass Attenuation Coefficients for Ge and BGO Crystals at 10 Me V

Abstract

The photon mass attenuation coefficients of the important materials for γ-ray detection, Ge and BGO (Bi₄Ge₃O₁₂) crystals, have been measured for 10.0 MeV γ-rays. The measurement system using the laser-Compton backscattering γ-rays and the high-resolution high-energy photon spectrometer has been developed and utilized. The effectiveness of the system achieving the total systematic uncertainties of 0.5% for the measurements of the photon mass attenuation coefficients was demonstrated. It was shown that the measured photon mass attenuation coefficients, 318.1 ± 1.7 [cm²/g] for the Ge crystal and 425.2 ± 2.4 [cm²/g] for the BGO crystal, agree within the achieved experimental uncertainties with the evaluated values including atomic and nuclear processes at 10.0 MeV.

KEYWORDS:

• photon mass attenuation coefficients
• Ge
• BGO
• crystals
• laser-Compton back scattering
• gamma rays
• high-energy gamma rays
• high-resolution spectrometer