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Euroball

EUROBALL was a European project to build and operate a highly efficient and powerful gamma-ray spectrometer for nuclear spectroscopy.

The Euroball Array

 

The countries involved were Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the UK. The NPG was involved in the design of the detectors and mechanical structure, the VXI electronics system and for many aspects of the software for control, data acquisition and analysis.

 

The project represented an amalgamation of many recent technical advances in detectors, electronics and data acquisition.

 

The Euroball array consisted of 30 large volume germanium detectors, 26 Clover germanium detectors and 15 Cluster germanium detectors each with an associated suppression shield. This gave up to 239 individual Ge elements. The array had a total photopeak efficiency of ~10% at 1.3 MeV. It allowed the unprecedented study of the properties of the atomic nucleus with a sensitivity of 10^-5 of the production cross-section.

 

The first phase of EUROBALL commenced operation in early 1997 at Legnaro National Laboratories, Italy.

 

In November 1998 EUROBALL was moved to the Institut de Recherches Subatomiques, Strasbourg, France and upgraded to include an inner Bismuth Germanate (BGO) array and a Silicon (Si) ball. The inner BGO array is a 4pi ball, located inside the Ge detectors, consisting of ~370 BGO detectors. The ball and the Ge detectors measure the total number of gamma rays emitted and their summed energy. The Si ball, known as EUCLIDES (EUroball Charged Light particle Identification DEtector Sphere), is a 4pi detector array to detect emitted light charged particles. This can also be located inside the BGO ball. EUROBALL IV commenced operations in June 1999.

 

Euroball IV ceased operations at the end of 2002. The Euroball resources being used in a series of new international projects. These included RISING at GSI, Jurogam at Jyväskylä, PRISMA at Legnaro and for EASIER at IReS.

 

The Euroball neutron wall then operational, consisting of 15 hexagonal liquid scintellator detectors which replaced the forward Ge detectors. The mechanical design and acquisition system for the neutron was performed by the NPG.

 

Further details are available from the NPG's Euroball Home Page.

 

 

 

Contacts
Prof J Simpson Detectors and Design
Dr V Pucknell Software
Mr I Lazarus Electronics
Mr J Strachan Mechanical Engineering