Scintillation light trapping and radiation damage in CeF3

We review solved and some remaining problems in the development of the CeF₃ scintillator. CeF₃ emerges as a dense (6.16 g/cc), fast (23 ns), and reasonably efficient (2400 photons/MeV) material with potential applications in high energy and nuclear physics experiments. Despite significant progress in technology the level of uncontrolled impurities and defects in present crystals is still too high, posing problems like scintillation light trapping and radiation damage. We speculate about the possibility of electron self-trapping and nonradiative recombination at Ce sites leading to a limited light output and intrinsic radiation hardness of CeF₃