Effect of Electron Traps on Scintillation of Praseodymium Activated Lu$_3$Al$_5$O $_{12}$

In this paper we present the studies performed on a set of Lu
₃
Al
₅
O
₁₂
:Pr (LuAG:Pr) crystals with praseodymium concentration between 1.5 and 10%, grown by the micro-pulling-down (muPD) technique. The research comprises the measurements of X-ray excited emission spectra and
¹³⁷
Cs gamma-ray pulse height spectra in a range from 78 to 600 K, and thermoluminescence glow curves. Based on experimental data we discuss the dependence of scintillation properties of Lu
₃
Al
₅
O
₁₂
:Pr on praseodymium content and temperature. The main attention is focused on a distinct increase of scintillation yield with temperature, which we attribute to existence of shallow electron traps and their temperature-dependent contribution to scintillation of LuAG:Pr. An active role of traps is demonstrated by a novel experiment combining X-ray and laser excitation.