Efficiency measurement and Monte Carlo simulations of a CeBr3 scintillator

CeBr3 crystals meet many of the demands of high performance scintillators, due to their excellent timing properties, good effective Z and high photon yield. It is important to characterize their efficiency and to verify whether modern Monte Carlo codes are reliable enough to reproduced the observed values. We report here on the measurement of both total and photopeak efficiency of a 1” diameter×1” height CeBr3 crystal for gamma-ray energies up to 1.4 MeV at several distances, using a variety of low energy gamma rays sources. The measured experimental efficiencies are compared with simulations developed in the framework of PENELOPE and GEANT4.