Commissioning of a bubble chamber for space radiation dosimetry

This paper reports on the design, construction, and operation of a 1 kg C3F8 bubble chamber intended for applications such as space missions for measurement and monitoring of galactic cosmic rays. The event signal analysis aims towards a full discrimination from known particles (neutrons and alphas). With the use of a hydrophone, a 95% efficiency signal detection was achieved. Test calibrations indicate an overlap of the two power distributions and 74% of well-discriminated events. Pressure signal differences also conjecture on the nature of the event signals. This work shows the performance of a bubble chamber that allows high-pressure (16 bar) operations. The increase in operational recompression leads to a reduction of the detector's dead time by a factor of six.