Refractive-index measurement of Si at γ -ray energies up to 2 MeV

The refractive index of silicon at gamma -ray energies from 181 to 1959 keV was investigated using the GAMS6 double crystal spectrometer and found to follow the predictions of the classical scattering model. This is in contrast to earlier measurements on the GAMS5 spectrometer, which suggested a sign change in the refractive index for photon energies above 500 keV. We present a reevaluation of the original data from 2011 as well as data from a 2013 campaign in which we show that systematic errors due to diffraction effects of the prism can explain the earlier data.