Scintillation light emission studies of LSO scintillators

UV and γ-ray excited luminescence and nuclear spectroscopy were used to study the relationship between the scintillation mechanisms of LSO and the spectroscopic characteristics obtained with PMT and APD readouts at room temperature. No correlation was found between scintillation decay time and light output. Like other investigators, we observed the existence of two distinct luminescence centers, Ce1 and Ce2, that mainly give rise to short (420 nm) and long (440 nm) emission wavelengths. Our measurements showed that different LSO crystals excited by γ-rays have emission spectra with largely different shapes and maxima depending on the relative population and luminescence efficiency of these centers. It was also found that the poor energy resolution of LSO and YSO scintillators is well correlated with the coexistence of the two competing luminescence mechanisms. The prevalence of either Ce1 or Ce2 luminescence tends to reduce the variance of light emission and, thus, to improve energy resolution. Inversely, the coexistence of the two centers increases variance and degrades energy resolution