A Search for Scintillation in Doped Cubic Lead Fluoride Crystals

An effort was made to introduce scintillation light in lead fluoride crystals by selective doping. It was found that some rare earth ions doped in the lead fluoride crystal may serve as luminescence centers. The photo- and X- luminescence spectra, the decay time constants and the light outputs were measured for these doped samples. The decay time was found to be at a few milliseconds for these rare earth doped lead fluoride samples, which is too long to be useful for the homogeneous hadronic calorimeter detector concept with dual readout for future high energy physics experiments. Work to introduce scintillation in lead fluoride will continue.