Fast Scintillators for High Radiation Levels

The development of new high luminosity hadron colliders (SSC and LHC) has posed a number of new challenges to traditional detector technologies. In addition to the expected problems of cost, project management, fast timing, energy resolution, occupancy levels, etc., some detectors (particularly calorimeters) face new problems due to the unusually high radiation levels expected in the forward regions of the beam-beam intersections. Although not alone in this category, scintillators face this last problem as probably the determining factor for their use in the high radiation areas, especially in the calorimetric detectors. This article is a review of ongoing developmental work to make scintillators a viable and important element of the next generation of high energy physics detector systems. Although the key problem is that of radiation tolerance, attention has to be paid to such questions as fast timing capability, energy resolution, light output, and photodetector spectral sensitivity and quantum efficiency in order to produce a realistic solution. It is the intent of the authors to show that although the final solutions may not exist at present, the achievements of the past few years show that the solution is probably realizable with proper effort and attention within the time scale envisioned for the construction of the new colliders