Making the most of aging scintillator

Large-area scintillation counters used for triggering on muons at collider detectors can involve long transmission lengths which make the collection o f an adequate amount of light difficult. This is a problem which aggravates as scintillator properties deteriorate with time and/or absorbed radiation . Inspired by the technique presently bring applied to the construction of its new muon counters, a solution has been developed at CDF, which has perm itted the collaboration to retain its older components for run II despite a dramatic deterioration in attenuation length in the course of run I. (C) 2 000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V, All rights reserved.