Technological factors and processes contributing to the scintillation mechanism have been considered in quaternary garnet ceramics doped with Ce(Gd,Lu)₃Al₂Ga₃O₁₂. The super-stoichiometric additive of gadolinium in the material composition or its co-doping with a low concentration of Mg were found to be effective tools to suppress phosphorescence in the quaternary garnet, confirming that it is not an intrinsic property of the material. The Monte-Carlo simulation of electronic excitation transfer demonstrates that the hopping migration along the gadolinium sublattice plays an essential role in forming the scintillation kinetic parameters. Breaking the integrity of the gadolinium sublattice by substitution with heavier lutetium ions increases the role of self-trapped states in the excitation of Ce³⁺ ions, which ensures both an increase in the fraction of short ~20 ns and very long ~600 ns components in the scintillation kinetics.

The operation and performance of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL) are presented, based on data collected in pp collisions at √ _s =13 TeV at the CERN LHC, in the years from 2015 to 2018 (LHC Run 2), corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 151 fb^-1. The CMS ECAL is a scintillating lead-tungstate crystal calorimeter, with a silicon strip preshower detector in the forward region that provides precise measurements of the energy and the time-of-arrival of electrons and photons. The successful operation of the ECAL is crucial for a broad range of physics goals, ranging from observing the Higgs boson and measuring its properties, to other standard model measurements and searches for new phenomena. Precise calibration, alignment, and monitoring of the ECAL response are important ingredients to achieve these goals. To face the challenges posed by the higher luminosity, which characterized the operation of the LHC in Run 2, the procedures established during the 2011–2012 run of the LHC have been revisited and new methods have been developed for the energy measurement and for the ECAL calibration. The energy resolution of the calorimeter, for electrons from Z boson decays reaching the ECAL without significant loss of energy by bremsstrahlung, was better than 1.8%, 3.0%, and 4.5% in the |η| intervals [0.0,0.8], [0.8,1.5], [1.5, 2.5], respectively. This resulting performance is similar to that achieved during Run 1 in 2011–2012, in spite of the more severe running conditions.

This article provides an overview of the latest results in the field of improving the properties of multiatomic inorganic oxide compounds for scintillators. A possibility to control the spatial distribution of nonequilibrium carriers in the ionization track by creating a compositional disorder in the crystalline matrix is in focus. Managing the disorder at the nanoscale level creates an opportunity for the efficient energy loss by carriers during thermalization, smaller spatial dispersion, and, consequently, more efficient binding into excitons and, further, an increase in the scintillation yield. The methods to produce multicationic crystalline scintillation materials have been discussed. The effectiveness of the approach is confirmed for both activated and self-activated scintillation materials.

This work focuses on the study of changes in the optical transmission of Y 2 SiO 5 :Ce crystals caused by ionizing radiation from γ-quanta and high energy protons. Radioisotope content of proton-irradiated crystals, transmission and induced absorption spectra, and scintillation characteristics are measured after irradiation with protons. In contrast to crystals of heavy complex oxides, Y 2 SiO 5 :Ce crystals do not demonstrate significant deterioration of transmission in the luminescence range (400–600 nm) under irradiation. Such crystals can be considered as a material for construction of detecting cells of the calorimetric detectors at LHC with high luminosity. The feasibility of growing large crackless Y 2 SiO 5 :Ce crystals with a diameter up to 50 mm and length up to 250mm is demonstrated

Radiation damage effects induced by the hadronic part of ionizing radiation in experiments at high-energy and high-luminosity accelerators will play a significant role as limiting factor of the long term stability when operating an experimental setup. Measurements of the deterioration of the optical transmission of lead tungstate (PbWO 4, PWO) scintillation crystals were performed after irradiation with high and low energy protons. One sample with CMS specification was irradiated in 2010 with a 24 GeV/c proton beam at the CERN Proton Synchrotron (PS) with a flux of about 10⁹ p/(cm²s) up to an accumulated fluence of 3.0 10³ p/cm². Eight more crystals of PWO-II quality with dimensions of 2×2×5 cm³ were selected from the set of crystals produced for the PANDA electromagnetic calorimeter at the future FAIR facility at Darmstadt. Four crystals were produced by the Bogoroditsk Technical Chemical Plant (Russia) and the others by the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics (China). These samples were irradiated in 2012 with a 150 MeV proton beam at the AGOR accelerator at KVI (Groningen, The Netherlands) with a flux of 3 10⁹ up to an integral fluence of about 1.0 10¹² p/cm² and 1.8 10¹³ p/cm², respectively. Due to the proton induced activation of long-lived radioactive secondaries the optical inspection of all samples had to be performed several months after irradiation for safety reasons. However, the samples were kept continuously cold to minimize thermal recovery. Both irradiations produced a similar set of induced absorption bands. Moreover, a shift of the fundamental absorption edge at short wavelength appears even after irradiation with low energy protons. The contribution will show in detail the set of experimental data and discuss a possible mechanism for an understanding and interpretation of the observed effects.