Investigation of scintillation detectors for relativistic heavy ion calorimetry

Abstract The new Δ E / E detection system, calorimeter telescope (CATE), for charge and mass determination of heavy ions at high energies (⩾100 MeV/n) has been designed. CATE, a calorimeter telescope will consist of position sensitive Si detectors for Δ E determination and scintillators, readout by either PIN diode or PMT, for total- E determination. Different scintillation detectors were tested with 130 Sn, 186 Pb, 197 Au and 238 U beams of (100–300) MeV/n ion energy. By properly selecting the beam species from the FRS and applying position corrections, an energy resolution of ≃0.5% FWHM was observed. The corresponding mass resolution of 1/200 is adequate for employment of CATE in the Fast Beam RISING campaign at GSI.