Measuring radiation environment in LHC or anywhere else, on your computer screen with Medipix

AbstraktAbstract

The Medipix family of chips use on-pixel pulse processing front-ends, digitization and counters to produce images of radiation. The devices have been derived from developments for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) physics experiments at CERN. With the miniaturization of the associated readout system a new method of dosimetry becomes accessible, where single radiation quanta are detected and imaged. Several examples of dose measurements at highly differing dose rates are presented here: monitoring of background radiation on earth, in a flying airplane and in the ATLAS experiment at LHC. During proton collision runs as well as during the stops of the accelerator the dose can be measured, including characterization of different types of radiation. Thanks to the noiseless method of quantum imaging dosimetry, a large dynamic range can be achieved, employing only this single device. The dose rate extends from recording only a few quanta in hours, up to hundreds of quanta recorded in a fraction of a ms. With complementary methods for the analysis of the exposed image frames, one can cover 14 orders of magnitude.

The Medipix family of chips use on-pixel pulse processing front-ends, digitization and counters to produce images of radiation. The devices have been derived from developments for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) physics experiments at CERN. With the miniaturization of the associated readout system a new method of dosimetry becomes accessible, where single radiation quanta are detected and imaged. Several examples of dose measurements at highly differing dose rates are presented here: monitoring of background radiation on earth, in a flying airplane and in the ATLAS experiment at LHC. During proton collision runs as well as during the stops of the accelerator the dose can be measured, including characterization of different types of radiation. Thanks to the noiseless method of quantum imaging dosimetry, a large dynamic range can be achieved, employing only this single device. The dose rate extends from recording only a few quanta in hours, up to hundreds of quanta recorded in a fraction of a ms. With complementary methods for the analysis of the exposed image frames, one can cover 14 orders of magnitude.