Development of Indigenous Pulse-Shape Discrimination Algorithm for Organic Scintillation detectors

TL;DR

This paper presents a cost-effective pulse shape discrimination algorithm for organic scintillation detectors that eliminates the need for programmable hardware, accurately differentiating neutrons and gamma rays using digital pulse analysis.

Contribution

The work introduces a novel PSD algorithm based on tail and total area analysis, removing the reliance on programmable hardware and demonstrating comparable performance to traditional methods.

Findings

Good agreement with Charge Integration method in neutron and gamma-ray counts

Provides accurate FoM comparable to hardware-based methods

Offers a flexible, hardware-free approach for radiation discrimination

Abstract

The use of programmable hardware devices is imperative for digital based pulse shape discrimination (PSD) to differentiate between various types of radiation. This work reports the development of a PSD algorithm based on tail area and total area, eliminating the need for programmable hardware. The pulses were collected using BC501 detector and Pu-Be source from a digitizer in the oscilloscope mode. The algorithm performs crucial functions such as pulse normalization, shaping, identification and removal of multiple peaks and threshold determination. The algorithm provides neutron and gamma-ray counts, scatter plot, and FoM. In order to test the efficacy of our proposed algorithm, pulses were collected from a different source-detector setup comprising BC501A detector and an Am-Be source from a digitizer in the oscilloscope mode and Charge Integration (CI) mode. The results obtained from our proposed algorithm and CI method clearly indicates a good agreement in terms of number of neutrons and gamma-rays and Figure-of-Merit (FoM), thus providing cost-effective alternative method for neutron and gamma-ray discrimination, offering flexibility and accuracy without specialized hardware.