Diamond detectors for heavy ion measurements

In 1999, the accelerator facility at GSI is scheduled to deliver beam intensities of about 10 10 particles/spill for all available ions up to 238 U. This necessitates the development of a new generation of radiation-resistant and ultra-fast detectors, in conjunction with new high-speed and low-noise electronics. Preliminary results confirm the suitability of CVD-diamond detectors for both, beam diagnostics, and heavy-ion experiments with projectiles in the energy region from 50 MeV/amu to 2 GeV/amu. Various test measurements with 241 Am-α-particles, 20 Ne, 40 Ca, 208 Pb and 238 U projectiles and different diamond samples are presented. The measurements demonstrate the excellent timing properties of CVD diamond which result in a unique single-pulse time resolution as well as an extremly high counting-rate capability of diamond detectors. It is shown that the disadvantage of the presently used polycrystalline material with respect to the pulse-height resolution does not prevent the usage of diamond detectors in a wide field of heavy-ion applications.