title: Sound and light from fractures in scintillators.
abstract: Prompted by intriguing events observed in certain particle-physics searches for rare events, we study light and acoustic emission simultaneously in some inorganic scintillators subject to mechanical stress. We observe mechanoluminescence in Bi4Ge3O12, CdWO4, and ZnWO4, in various mechanical configurations at room temperature and ambient pressure. We analyze the temporal and amplitude correlations between the light emission and the acoustic emission during fracture. A novel application of the precise energy calibration of Bi4Ge3O12 provided by radioactive sources allows us to deduce that the fraction of elastic energy converted to light is at least 3×10(-5).
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada and Institut Lumière Matière, UMR5306 Université Lyon 1-CNRS, Université de Lyon, F-69622 Villeurbanne Cedex, France.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tantot
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Santucci
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Ramos
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Deschanel
authors.forename: M-A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Verdier
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mony
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ciliberto
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Vanel
authors.forename: P C F
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Di Stefano