Stimulated Recovery of the Radiation Damage in Lead Tungstate Crystals

The lead tungstate crystal (PbWO
₄
, PWO) is one of the widely used scintillation materials for electromagnetic calorimeters (EMCs) in high-energy physics experiments. The degradation of the optical transmittance in the range of the luminescence spectrum under ionizing radiation leads to losses of the light output resulting in the deterioration of the energy resolution and limiting the lifetime of the calorimeter. A possible way to restore radiation damage is the in situ illumination by visible or near-infrared light of the whole crystal volume. It allows recovering the transmittance losses due to the depopulation of the color centers. Such a kind of stimulated recovery subsystem based on a blue light-emitting diode is considered for the EMC of the PANDA detector at Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) (Darmstadt, Germany). Here, we report on the stimulated recovery studies of the lead tungstate radiation damage induced by external light from laser diodes at different wavelengths. The level of technological development of laser diodes allows increasing the efficiency of the stimulated recovery.