A detector with high detection efficiency in 4- and 5-photon-positronium annihilations

We first measured 4- and 5-photon annihilations in positronium using a multiphoton spectrometer (UNI), which consists of 32 NaI(Tl) scintillators with lead shields, each being located on a surface of an icosidodecahedron. The front face of each scintillator is placed at a distance of L = 262 mm from the center of the UNI. With this setup, the detection efficiency of 4- and 5-photon-annihilation processes are too small to get a sufficient number of events to analyze the physics. To obtain a larger detection efficiency, we must set the NaI(Tl) scintillators closer to the target. The original principle in designing the UNI was to suppress backgrounds (BG) and make them as low as possible allowing modest efficiencies for 4- and 5-photon-annihilation events, i.e., to get the highest signal-to-noise ratio (S/N). The new concept is to get the highest S/sigma where sigma is an error of one standard deviation of the signal including BG effects. A higher S/sigma means a larger number of events with smaller BG taking into account a statistical effect. The detection efficiencies with BG effects are studied with respect to L using a detector simulator based on the EGS4 code in which 2- to 5-photon-annihilation events are generated by quantum-electrodynamic processes based on GRACE and BASES/SPRING codes. As a result, the detection efficiency and S/sigma of 5-photon annihilations at L = 136 mm are 529 and 17 times larger than those at L = 262 mm, respectively.