A summary on an investigation of GAGG:Ce afterglow emission in the context of future space applications within the HERMES nanosatellite mission

Dilillo, G. and Campana, R. and Zampa, N. and Fuschino, F. and Pauletta, G. and Galgóczi, Gábor and Ripa, Jakub (2020) A summary on an investigation of GAGG:Ce afterglow emission in the context of future space applications within the HERMES nanosatellite mission. PROCEEDINGS OF SPIE - THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR OPTICAL ENGINEERING, 11444. ISSN 0277-786X

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Abstract

GAGG:Ce (Cerium-doped Gadolinium Aluminium Gallium Garnet) is a promising new scintillator crystal. A wide array of interesting features - such as high light output, fast decay times, almost non-existent intrinsic background and robustness - make GAGG:Ce an interesting candidate as a component of new space-based gamma-ray detectors. As a consequence of its novelty, literature on GAGG:Ce is still lacking on points crucial to its applicability in space missions. In particular, GAGG:Ce is characterized by unusually high and long-lasting delayed luminescence. This afterglow emission can be stimulated by the interactions between the scintillator and the particles of the near-Earth radiation environment. By contributing to the noise, it will impact the detector performance to some degree. In this manuscript we summarize the results of an irradiation campaign of GAGG:Ce crystals with protons, conducted in the framework of the HERMES-TP/SP (High Energy Rapid Modular Ensemble of Satellites - Technological and Scientific Pathfinder) mission. A GAGG:Ce sample was irradiated with 70 MeV protons, at doses equivalent to those expected in equatorial and sun-synchronous Low-Earth orbits over orbital periods spanning 6 months to 10 years, time lapses representative of satellite lifetimes. We introduce a new model of GAGG:Ce afterglow emission able to fully capture our observations. Results are applied to the HERMES-TP/SP scenario, aiming at an upper-bound estimate of the detector performance degradation due to the afterglow emission expected from the interaction between the scintillator and the near-Earth radiation environment.

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