A novel acquisition method of nuclear spectrum based on pulse area analysis

TL;DR

This paper introduces a pulse area analysis (PAA) method for nuclear spectrum acquisition using digitizers, offering advantages over traditional pulse height analysis, especially at high count rates and small shaping times.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel PAA method as an effective alternative to PHA for nuclear spectrum acquisition, demonstrating improved resolution and performance.

Findings

PAA method improves energy resolution by about 66% over PHA at 0.5us shaping time.

Simulation and experimental results confirm PAA's advantages at high count rates.

PAA effectively substitutes traditional pulse height analysis in nuclear spectrum measurement.

Abstract

A novel method based on pulse area analysis(PAA) was presented for acquisition nuclear spectrum by the digitizer. PAA method can be used as a substitute for the traditional method of pulse height analysis (PHA). In the PAA method a commercial digitizer was employed to sample and sum in the pulse, and the area of pulse is proportional to the energy of the detected radiation. The results of simulation and experiment indicate the great advantages of PAA method, especially when the count rate is high and shaping time constant is small. When shaping time constant is 0.5us, the energy resolution of PAA is about 66% better than that of PHA.