<title>Studies of the activation background in CsI(Tl) detectors</title>

CsI scintillation crystals are widely used as detection in (gamma) -ray astronomy observations. In the MeV energy region, one of the most important background sources in CsI is the (beta) decays induced in the crystal by cosmic ray protons and their secondaries. One recent idea for reducing this background is to use discrete detector arrays to reject the large amount of localized (beta) decay events. Two experiments were carried out with 1 cm3 CsI crystals bombarded with energetic proton beams and fast/thermal neutrons, with the aim of evaluating the effectiveness of this method in pixelated (1 cm3) CsI detectors. The ratio of the number of decays resulting in single site and multiple site …