Radiation-hardness studies with cerium-doped fused-silica fibers

In this work, we describe our R&D effort to develop potentially radiation-hard scintillating and wavelength shifting fibers by doping fused-silica with cerium. The cerium-doped optical fibers with different core structures and concentrations were exposed to gamma radiation (60Co) at different dose rates up to 100 kGy. We evaluated the radiation-induced degradation in photoluminescence, optical transmission, and recovery phenomena in the wavelength range from 300 to 700 nm. We were able to model the experimental data based on second-order rate equations where the fit parameters that govern the damage profile were utilized to predict recovery. We also measured the influence of radiation on the numerical aperture. Finally, we offer some thoughts on the use of these types of fibers in particle and nuclear physics detectors.