Electron cascades in sensors for optical detection of ionizing radiation
A new class of high-speed detectors, called RadOptic detectors, measures ionizing radiation incident on a transparent semiconductor by sensing changes in the refractive index with an optical probe beam. We describe the role of radiation-initiated electron cascades in setting the sensitivity and the spatial and temporal resolution of RadOptic detectors. We model electron cascades with both analytical and Monte Carlo computational methods. We find that the timescale for the development of an electron cascade is less than of order 100 fs and is not expected to affect the time response of a detector. The characteristic size of the electron cloud is typically less than 2 μm, enabling high spatial resolution in imaging systems. The electron-hole pair density created by single x-rays is much smaller than the saturation density and, therefore, single events should not saturate the detector.