Particle contamination measurements around hadron beams used for irradiation of silicon detectors for the LHC

Abstract

While LHC silicon detector prototypes were irradiated with pions and protons for radiation damage studies at Villigen-PSI and CERN-PS, the nearby beam contaminations by neutrons, protons and photons was measured by means of various activation foils and dosimeters. The estimated fluxes due to neutron and proton contamination are a few percent of the pion and proton fluxes given to the silicon detectors. In all cases, the low energy neutron component is found to be dominant.