This paper summarises a comprehensive Monte Carlo simulation study for precision resonance energy scan measurements. Apart from the proof of principle for natural width and line shape measurements of...

International audienceFive single crystals of cerium-doped lutetium yttrium oxyorthosilicate (LYSO:Ce) grown by the Czochralski method were submitted to structural characterisation by X-ray (XRD) and neutron (ND) diffraction, scanning (SEM) and transmission (TEM) electron microscopy and energy dispersive microanalysis (EDS). The Ultimate Tensile Strength (UTS), the Young Modulus (YM) and the Light Yield (LY) of the samples were also measured in order to correlate the mechanical and the optical behaviour of the crystals with the characteristics of their microstructure. Two of the samples analysed were also heat treated at 300 °C for 10 h to evidence possible variations induced by the temperature in the optical and mechanical response of the crystals. Results showed that the mean compositional variations evidenced by the structural analyses do not affect the mechanical and optical behaviour of the samples. On the contrary, the thermal treatment could induce the formation of coherent spherical particles (size 10 to 15 nm), not uniformly distributed inside the sample, that strongly reduce the UTS and YM values, but it does not affect the optical response of the crystal. This latter result was attributed to the low value of the heating temperature (300 °C) that is not sufficiently high to induce annealing of the oxygen vacancies traps that are responsible of the deterioration of the scintillation properties of the LYSO:Ce crystals.This study was carried out in the framework of the Crystal Clear Collaboration (CCC)

The tetragonal ${\mathrm{PbWO}}_4$ (PWO) is one of the most important scintillating crystals, being used both in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and in the PANDA project at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR). Light yield and other relevant scintillation properties depend, among many factors, also on the crystal mechanical quality. Accordingly, a detailed knowledge of crystal piezo-optic properties is a mandatory step toward understanding elasto-optic behavior and performing crystal quality control. In this paper, we evaluate for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, by means of both photoelastic and x-ray measurements, some components of the piezo-optic tensor; moreover, when the crystal is acted upon by a uniaxial stress, we obtain an evaluation for the rotation angle of the optic plane under stress as well as the photoelastic constant. These parameters are necessary to detect the residual stresses within the crystal, if any, and to give an overall quality measure. Such a methodology is in general suitable for any tetragonal crystals.

Conoscopic analysis of interference fringes is one of the most useful tools for investigating the mechanical properties of a crystal. These fringes are generated by a surface of constant phase difference, called the Bertin surface, whose shape depends on the piezo-optic properties of the material and on the applied stress. Here we investigate systematically for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, these surfaces as algebraic surfaces. We also describe their dependence on the stress when these are “small” and give a detailed analysis for all crystallographic classes.