Fano factor of scintillation detectors from photoelectron correlations

In this work we propose a new experimental approach to studying the statistics of the scintillation light from scintillation detectors. Two photodetectors are used for detecting the light output from the two faces of a thin scintillator crystal. From the correlation of the signals from the two photodetectors, the Fano factor F
_opt
of the scintillation light is determined. Data on several inorganic crystalline scintillators (CsI:Na, LaBr
₃
:Ce, and CdWO
₄
) are presented, and in LaBr
₃
:Ce it is observed that the correlations are negative and F
_opt
<< 1 (sub-Poisson statistics).