  The anticipated use of more than one thousand lead fluoride (PbF2) crystals
as a fast and compact Cherenkov calorimeter material in a parity violation
experiment at MAMI stimulated the investigation of the light yield (L.Y.) of
these crystals. The number of photoelectrons (p.e.) per MeV deposited energy
has been determined with a hybrid photomultiplier tube (HPMT). In response to
radioactive sources a L.Y. between 1.7 and 1.9 p.e./MeV was measured with 4%
statistical and 5% systematic error. The L.Y. optimization with appropriate
wrappings and couplings was investigated by means of the HPMT. Furthermore, a
fast Monte Carlo simulation based on the GEANT code was employed to calculate
the characteristics of Cherenkov light in the PbF2 crystals. The computing time
was reduced by a factor of 50 compared to the regular photon tracking method by
implementing detection probabilities as a three-dimensional look-up table. For
a single crystal a L.Y. of 2.1 p.e./MeV was calculated. The corresponding
detector response to electrons between 10 and 1000 MeV was highly linear with a
variation smaller than 1%.
