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

The scintillation mechanism in scintillators is affected by the operating temperature. Therefore one can control to some extent the scintillation property by controlling the temperature. Recently the authors developed an optical fiber based radiation measurement system in a nuclear facility. To utilize the full ability of optical fibers, wavelength of conventional scintillators is too short. Thus they investigated the scintillation property at different temperatures. After a series of experiments, they have found infrared light emission around 1.5 microm from a cooled CsI(Tl) scintillator. Although the intensity of this emission is less than 1/10 of the visible light intensity, this wavelength matches the minimum loss in silica optical fibers. It also matches partly the amplification band of the erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA). This interesting coincidence might lead to the possibility of using this material as an infrared scintillator