Eur. Phys. J. A (2010) 44: 513-519
https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2010-10967-1

Special Article - Tools for Experiment and Theory

An actively vetoed Clover -detector for nuclear astrophysics at LUNA

¹ Institute of Nuclear Research (ATOMKI), Debrecen, Hungary
² University of Debrecen, Debrecen, Hungary
³ Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (FZD), Dresden, Germany
⁴ INFN Sezione di Padova, Padova, Italy
⁵ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Padova, Padova, Italy
⁶ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Genova and INFN Sezione di Genova, Genova, Italy
⁷ INFN, Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Assergi, Italy
⁸ Dipartimento di Fisica Sperimentale, Università di Torino and INFN Sezione di Torino, Torino, Italy
⁹ Università degli Studi di Milano and INFN Sezione di Milano, Milano, Italy
¹⁰ Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, Università di Napoli “Federico II”, Napoli, Italy
¹¹ INFN Sezione di Napoli, Napoli, Italy
¹² Institut für Experimentalphysik III, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany
¹³ Osservatorio Astronomico di Collurania, Teramo, Italy
¹⁴ Seconda Università di Napoli, Caserta, Italy

^* e-mail: d.bemmerer@fzd.de

Received: 14 December 2009
Revised: 23 February 2010
Accepted: 31 March 2010
Published online: 30 April 2010

Abstract

An escape-suppressed, composite high-purity germanium detector of the Clover type has been installed at the Laboratory for Underground Nuclear Astrophysics (LUNA) facility, deep underground in the Gran Sasso Laboratory, Italy. The laboratory -ray background of the Clover detector has been studied underground at LUNA and, for comparison, also in an overground laboratory. Spectra have been recorded both for the single segments and for the virtual detector formed by online addition of all four segments. The effect of the escape suppression shield has been studied as well. Despite their generally higher intrinsic background, escape-suppressed detectors are found to be well suited for underground nuclear-astrophysics studies. As an example for the advantage of using a composite detector deep underground, the weak ground-state branching of the E _p = 223 keV resonance in the ²⁴Mg(p,)²⁵Al reaction is determined with improved precision.