Positron-Annihilation Lifetime Spectroscopy using Electron Bremsstrahlung

A new type of an intense source of positrons for materials research has been set up at the superconducting electron linear. The source employs hard X-rays from electron-bremsstrahlung production generating energetic electron-positron pairs inside the sample under investigation. CW-operation allows performing experiments with significantly reduced pile-up artefacts in the detectors compared to pulsed mode operation in conventional accelerators. The high-resolution timing of the accelerator with bunch lengths below 10 ps full width at half maximum (FWHM) allows positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS) measurements with high time resolution. A single-component annihilation lifetime of Kapton has been measured as (381.3 ± 0.3) ps. Employing segmented detectors for the detection of both annihilation photons allows for the first time to perform a 4D tomographic reconstruction of the annihilation sites including the annihilation lifetime.