The use of 1.5 μm infrared light from a cooled scintillator for optical fiber based system

The scintillation mechanism for each scintillator is greatly affected by the operating temperature. Therefore we can control the scintillation property by controlling the temperature. Recently we plan to develop an optical fiber based radiation measurement system in a nuclear facility. To utilize the full ability of optical fibers, wavelength of conventional scintillators is short. Thus we investigated the scintillation property at different temperature. After a series of experiments, we have found the infrared light emission from a cooled CsI(Tl) scintillator. Although this emission is less than 1/10 of visible light, this wavelength matches to the minimum loss in silica optical fibers. It also matches partly to the amplification band of the erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA). These interesting coincidence might lead us to the possibility of using this material as an “infrared scintillator”