miniSCIDOM: a scintillator-based tomograph for volumetric dose reconstruction of single laser-driven proton bunches

Laser plasma accelerators enable the generation of intense and short proton bunches on a micrometer scale, thus offering new experimental capabilities to research fields like ultra-high dose rate radiobiology or material analysis. Being spectrally broadband, laser-accelerated proton bunches allow for tailored volumetric dose deposition in a sample via single bunches to excite or probe specific sample properties. The rising number of such experiments indicates a need for diagnostics providing spatially-resolved characterization of dose distributions with volumes of ∼1 cm³ for single proton bunches to allow for fast online feedback.
Here we present the scintillator-based miniSCIDOM detector for online single-bunch tomographic reconstruction of dose distributions in volumes of up to ∼1 cm³. The detector achieves a spatial resolution below 500 μm and a sensitivity of 100 mGy. The detector performance is tested at a proton therapy cyclotron and an LPA proton source. The experiments’ primary focus is the characterization of the scintillator’s ionization quenching behavior.