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EP: Extraterrestrische Physik

EP 7: Instrumentierung

EP 7.2: Fachvortrag

Dienstag, 14. März 2006, 16:45–17:00, B

Anticoincidence for RAD — •Onno Kortmann, Rudolf Beaujean, Eckart Böhm, Stephan Böttcher, Sönke Burmeister, Michael Gooß, and Robert Wimmer-Schweingruber — Institut für Experimentelle und Angewandte Physik, University of Kiel, D-24098 Kiel, Germany

RAD, the radiation assessment detector on NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover mission is designed to detect a wide range of different particle species at energies up to 100 MeV/nuc. For some of those particles (esp. neutral particles), an efficient shielding against stray particles is neccessary. For this instrument, the best shielding is deemed to be an active anti-coincidence in the form of a scintillation detector.

We constructed a setup that allows us test various scintillator geometries, scintillator surface treatments, coatings, glueings and wrappings for their light output. We performed tests on a thin cuboid and on geometry forseen for RAD.

The test particles in this setup are cosmic muons. As cosmic muons are minimally ionizing charged particles, they allow to test the scintillators at the threshold of detectability. An additional telescope assembly allows for position-dependent readout of the test pieces.

Using the GEANT4 monte-carlo toolkit, several checks and simulations were made and compared to the setup. Both particles as well as optical photon simulations were set up.