Application of two-photon absorption in PWO scintillator for fast timing of interaction with ionizing radiation

This work was aimed at searching for fast phenomena in scintillators in sub-10-ps range, a benchmark timing for the time response of radiation detectors in particle colliders. The pump-and-probe optical absorption technique with a tunable-wavelength parametric oscillator as the pump and a continuous-spectrum source as the probe beam was used to study lead tungstate PbWO4 (PWO) single crystals. It is shown that the rise time of the probe pulse absorption induced by the pump pulse is shorter than the pump pulse width of 200 fs. The approximately linear dependence of the probe absorption on the pump pulse energy density evidences that the induced absorption is caused by two-photon absorption involving one probe and one pump photon. We demonstrate that the intensity of the induced absorption at certain wavelengths is influenced by gamma irradiation, provided that an appropriate light polarization is selected. The application of the irradiation-sensitive nonlinearity for fast timing in radiation detectors is discussed.