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Advanced GAmma Tracking Array (AGATA)
editThe “Advanced GAmma Tracking Array” (AGATA) is a collaborative pan-European project (of 350 scientists from 43 countries)to design, build and operate a gamma-ray tracking spectrometer for nuclear physics applications.
This project first started in 2003 from an original research & development project that demonstrated the feasibility of building a 4π spectrometer through the technique of gamma-ray energy tracking in electrically segmented Germanium (Ge) detectors. The completed AGATA spectrometer has an unsurpassed level of detection sensitivity to nuclear electromagnetic radiation g radiation in a very large energy range (from a few tens of keV up to 10 MeV and more), with the largest possible efficiency and with a very wide spectral range. AGATA has further paved the way for the pursuit of investigations into radioactive and stable ion beams.
The array consists of 180 hexagonal germanium crystals assembled into 60 triple-clusters and 12 pentagonal crystals. The shell of germanium formed has an inner radius of 22 cm and consists of 230 kg of germanium.
In the UK, the Nuclear Physics group at the University of Liverpool and CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire have secured funding from the EPSRC to contribute to the design, construction and testing of the first phase sub-array. This will involve the purchase and characterisation of one detector module and the subsequent development of pulse shape analysis algorithms to allow interaction positions to be determined. The work will also involve the development of digital electronics for the detector readout of the germanium crystals allowing the implementation of real time solutions for the energy, time and position determination.
Social Benefits from the AGATA Array
editOne benefit to the field of medicine from the AGATA array is that because it is such a sensitive detector, it has been given rise to PET and SPECT scanners - which are imaging and diagnosis machines to detect disease and tumors.