An Investigation of Lead Tungstate and Doped Borosilicate Glass for Future Electromagnetic Calorimetry

The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) being built at Brookhaven National Laboratory will facilitate experiments for physicists to probe the inner structure of nuclei by colliding high-energy electron beams with relativistic nucleons and ions. To accomplish this, physicists must be able to reconstruct the kinematic parameters of the interaction by capturing their energetic properties with high precision. Thus, with the advent of the EIC, there has been a push for developing high-precision electromagnetic calorimeters (ECALS), devices that can measure the energy of electromagnetic particles, such as electrons. Crystalline scintillators have been a staple in ECAL for the last 40 years, but their implementation has revealed the need for further investigation and optimization of their fundamental properties such as light yield, radiation hardness, and transmittance. Additionally, current crystal scintillators are expensive and difficult to manufacture en masse, a necessity for the EIC. In this talk, I will present a study I conducted comparing key characteristics of a popular crystal scintillator, lead tungstate (PbWO4), with a promising, less expensive alternative, doped borosilicate scintillating glass.