In general, the energy calibration of gamma-ray detectors is carried out by using radioactive sources with well-known emission lines. The fact that the scintillator material LaBr3 includes natural radioactivity is often taken advantage of to perform an energy calibration without the need to handle an external radioactive source. For this purpose, the emission energy of photons to be detected in peaks has to be well known. Though the energies of the emission lines of the relevant isotope 138La and further information on radioactive contaminations are published with high precision, there are inconsistencies in the literature concerning the effective energies of observed photon peaks caused by inherent radioactivity. In this article, the actual peak positions are published as a result of high-precision measurements. The potential and limitations of an energy calibration of LaBr3 detectors based on the inherent radioactivity are discussed, as the emission lines of 138La are detected in clusters rather than single, clearly defined lines.
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Rechteinformation
CC BY 4.0 ; Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
Themenbereich der Metrologie
Ionisierende Strahlung
Geschäftsfelder
Metrologie für die Gesellschaft
; Grundlagen der Metrologie
Zitierung
Dombrowski, H. & Stenger, J. (2024). Energy calibration of LaBr₃ detectors using inherent radioactivity. Journal of Instrumentation, 19(09), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-0221/19/09/p09033
