Temperature Effect on the Radioluminescence of Differently Doped Silica-Based Optical Fibers

We evaluate the temperature effect on the X-ray radiation-induced luminescence (RIL) of differently doped silica fibers obtained via the sol-gel route. Previous investigations showed that these optical materials exhibit interesting dosimetry properties, such as very good detection capabilities and linear response over a large range of dose rate. However, several radiation environments, such as space and particle accelerators, also require a careful assessment of the temperature effect on these properties exploited for dosimetry. With this aim, we characterize their RIL efficiency and spectral dependence at several irradiation temperatures. We demonstrate that all the investigated materials present a nonnegligible temperature dependence of the RIL in the range from -120 °C to 80 °C. The temperature effect on the RIL signal is still compensable via calibration and temperature monitoring.