Measurements of photon mass attenuation coefficients for Ge and BGO crystals at 10 MeV

The photon mass attenuation coefficients of the important materials for γ-ray detection, Ge and BGO (Bi4Ge3O12) crystals, have been measured for 10.0 MeV γ-rays. The measurement system using the laser-Compton backscattering γ-rays and the high-resolution high-energy photon spectrometer has been developed and utilized. The effectiveness of the system achieving the total systematic uncertainties of 0.5% for the measurements of the photon mass attenuation coefficients was demonstrated. It was shown that the measured photon mass attenuation coefficients, 318.1±1.7 [cm2/g] for the Ge crystal and 425.2±2.4 [cm2/g] for the BGO crystal, agree within the achieved experimental uncertainties with the evaluated values including atomic and nuclear processes at 10.0 MeV. (author)