Characteristics of large-area position-sensitive scintillation detectors

We describe a design and present results of the examination of the characteristics of five types of polymethyl-methacrylate-based large-area position-sensitive scintillation detectors differing in the way the light is extracted to the photomultiplier tubes (PMT), in dimensions (120 × 100 × 3 and 160 × 140 × 3 cm), in the light attenuation length in the scintillator, and in the type of PMTs used. To obtain the coordinates of the point where the particle traverses the scintillator, the PMT signal amplitudes were analyzed. The factors affecting the coordinate resolution of the detectors were studied. The detector with dimensions 160 × 140 × 3 cm has a coordinate resolution of 15 cm, a time resolution of 2.2 ns, and a detection efficiency of 0.995.