Absolute charge calibration of scintillating screens for relativistic electron detection.

We report on new charge calibrations and linearity tests with high-dynamic range for eight different scintillating screens typically used for the detection of relativistic electrons from laser-plasma based acceleration schemes. The absolute charge calibration was done with picosecond electron bunches at the ELBE linear accelerator in Dresden. The lower detection limit in our setup for the most sensitive scintillating screen (KODAK Biomax MS) was 10 fC/mm(2). The screens showed a linear photon-to-charge dependency over several orders of magnitude. An onset of saturation effects starting around 10-100 pC/mm(2) was found for some of the screens. Additionally, a constant light source was employed as a luminosity reference to simplify the transfer of a one-time absolute calibration to different experimental setups.