2026 CAP Congress / Congrès de l'ACP 2026

Development of the GeV Cube high-energy electron detector

23 Jun 2026, 18:00

1h 30m

U. Ottawa - Learning Crossroads (CRX) Building

Poster Competition (Graduate Student) / Compétition affiches (Étudiant(e) 2e ou 3e cycle) Applied Physics and Instrumentation / Physique appliquée et de l'instrumentation (DAPI / DPAI) DAPI Poster Session & Student Poster Competition | Session d'affiches DPAI et concours d'affiches étudiantes

Speaker

Caleb Guthrie

Description

The GeV Cube detector (GCD) is being designed as a new diagnostic for high-energy particle detection from short-pulse, high-powered laser sources [1]. In particular, the GCD will be employed to study the Ponderomotive acceleration of electrons from petawatt-class laser systems [2].

The GCD is designed to detect and identify single electrons with energies in the range of 50 MeV to 1 GeV. It is comprised of three layers of 4x4 grids of optically isolated Bismuth Germanate (BGO) scintillator crystals affixed to a 4x4 array Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM) detector [3]. Incoming electrons deposit energy in the scintillator crystals in the three layers, forming a track of the electron through the detector. Surrounding the path of the primary particle there is a plume of secondary scattered particles. Analysis of the energy deposited per layer along the primary particle track and the energy deposited per layer from the secondary particles in the surrounding pixels allows for the clear identification that a single high energy electron has been detected and an evaluation of its energy.

Initial characterization of the GCD is carried out by detection of cosmic rays hitting the detector. Incident muons with average energies of 4 GeV [4] transit the detector similarly to high energy electrons. The gain on the SiPMs is reduced to give similar output signals per pixel as would be obtained with electrons. Geant4 simulations are employed to model the detector response to both electrons and muons. The details of the detector design and measured results will be presented.

[1] M. C. Downer et al., “Diagnostics for plasma-based electron accelerators,” Rev. Mod. Phys., vol. 90, no. 3, Art. no. 035002, 2018, doi: 10.1103/RevModPhys.90.035002.
[2] A. Longman et al., “Toward direct spatial and intensity characterization of ultra-high-intensity laser pulses using ponderomotive scattering of free electrons,” Phys. Plasmas, vol. 30, no. 8, 082110, 2023, doi: 10.1063/5.0160195.
[3] Hamamatsu Photonics K.K., MPPC array S13361-3050AE-04, 2024.
[4] J. L. Autran et al., “Characterization of atmospheric muons at sea level using a cosmic ray telescope,” Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, vol. 903, pp. 77–84, 2018, doi: 10.1016/j.nima.2018.06.038.