Abstract
Pulse-height of CaF2:Eu and YAlO3:Ce scintillators to single H+, He+ and O3+ ions are measured over a continuous energy range using a time-of-flight (TOF) - scintillator - photoelectric multiplier tube (PMT) apparatus. A nonlinear response of the scintillators under ionizing ion irradiation is quantitatively evaluated by considering energy partitioning process. The results show that, in a differential energy deposition region with negligible displacement damage, the low, medium and high excitation energy deposition density (Dexci) produced by H+, He+ and O3+ ions irradiation, respectively, have significantly different impacts on the response characteristics of these two benchmark scintillators. For CaF2:Eu, the scintillation efficiency under ion irradiation monotonically decreases with increasing excitation-energy density. In contrast, the response efficiency of YAlO3:Ce scintillation initially increases with excitation-energy density at low excitation-energy densities, goes through a maximum, and then decreases with further increasing excitation-energy density. The fundamental mechanism causing these different response behaviours in the scintillators is based on the competition between the scintillation response and the nonradiative quenching process under different excitation densities, which is also the main origin of the nonlinear response of scintillators to irradiation.