Radiation and solvent effects on wavelength shifting fibers used with liquid scintillators

Abstract The chemical compatibility of wave length shifting fibers with several liquid scintillators has been investigated. Based on systematic characterization of the behavior of the BC-517 family, a time of life of 70–450 years was estimated for the polystyrene based wave length shifting fiber in BC-517P scintillator. Wavelength shifting (WLS) fibers irradiated continuously to a dose of 6.4 Mrads (at .377 Mrad/hr of 60 Co) were observed to decrease from 100% to 5% transmission; however, after 100 hours of annealing, the transmission increased to 90%. GEANT3 simulations of a simplified calorimeter located behind a BaF 2 electromagnetic calorimeter for the GEM detector at SSC showed that the constant term in the energy resolution will change from 1.8 to 2.9 in five years at 10 34 luminosity for pseudorapidity η=3.