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Gamma Spectrometer
(Single – channel Analyzer)
Harsh Purwar (07MS – 76)
3rd Year, Integrated M.S.
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata
Experiment No. – 3
Nuclear & Particle Physics Laboratory (PH – 325)
Compton Effect: Compton scattering is a type of scattering that X-rays and 𝛾-rays undergo in
matter. The inelastic scattering of photons in matter results in a decrease in energy (increase in
wavelength) of an X-ray or gamma photon, called the Compton effect. Part of the energy of the
X/gamma ray is transferred to a scattering electron, which recoils and is ejected from its atom, and
the rest of the energy is taken by the scattered photon.
Pair Production: Pair production refers to the creation of an elementary particle and its anti-
particle, usually from a photon (or another neutral boson). This is allowed, provided there is enough
energy available to create the pair – at least the total rest mass energy of the two particles – and
that the situation allows both energy and momentum to be conserved. All other conserved
quantum numbers of the produced particles must sum to zero, thus the created particles shall have
opposite values of each quantum number.
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Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata 23rd Feb – 2nd Mar 2010
Modes of Energy Transfer: When a high speed charged particle passes through the crystal lattice, it may
transfer a small fraction of its energy to an electron in the valence band as a result of which the latter will
be raised to the conduction band which is normally empty in an insulator due to large energy gap or
forbidden gap. This is about 6 to 8 eV in case of halogen halide crystals. The electron now moves through
the crystal till it comes across an electron trap or a crystal imperfection due either to a structural defect in
the crystal or due to an added impurity like thallium in our case. The hole left in the valence band (which
behaves like a positively charged particle) also moves through the lattice.
Forbidden
Photon
Band
Valance Band
The electron trapped in the conduction band may subsequently return to the lower valance band.
In this process light is emitted in the form of fluorescence radiation. The whole process occurs in times of
the order of 10−8 sec or less. The light so emitted however, has to high an energy (6 to 8 eV) to lie in the
visible region. However the presence of an activator (like thallium) shifts the emission spectrum to the
visible region in the de-excitation process. Some impurity levels now appear in the forbidden zone through
which the electron can de-excite to the valence band. As a result the photon has much lower energy and
lies in the visible region.
For sodium iodide activated with thallium scintillator, the emission spectrum is shifted to longer
wavelengths (visible region) for which the crystal is usually transparent. Thus the emitted fluorescent light
escapes absorption in the crystal and can be used to form electrical pulse.
Photo-multiplier tube: In all the above described processes electrons with different energies were
produced. These electrons collide with the atoms of the crystal and excite them. These atoms emit
photons with energy in the visible range during their de-excitation. These photons reach the photo-
cathode of the photo-multiplier tube, the next part of the detector.
From the photo-cathode numbers of emitted electrons rush towards the first dynode, strike it and
generate more electrons which then accelerate towards the next dynode. The supplied external high
voltage (PMT voltage) is divided approximately equally across the dynodes. So when the resulting shower
of electrons plunge into the anode with higher potential gives rise to an electric pulse whose amplitude is
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Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata 23rd Feb – 2nd Mar 2010
proportional to the amount of collected photons at the photo-cathode and therefore the energy of the
incoming gamma photon.
This electric signal is then amplified and is converted into digital signal using an Analog to Digital
converter. By analyzing the height of the pulse, energy of the incoming gamma photon can be measured.
𝛽 − 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑦
𝛽 − 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑦
𝛾 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑦
137
56 𝐵𝑎
Experimental Setup:
The single channel analyzer consists of a Scintillation detector with an inbuilt photomultiplier tube. The
high voltage required for the acceleration of electrons is provided to the PMT by amplifying the usual AC
(220V, 50Hz) using proper circuitry. Whereas the output pulse/signal from the PMT is pre-amplified and
passed through a discriminator and pulse shaper and then finally to an electronic counter. The electronic
counter counts the incoming pulses and shows them on its display screen. As evident the signal from the
PMT carries a lot of noise which is primarily removed by the discriminator circuit. The pulse shaper changes
the incoming bell shaped pulse to a square pulse so that it can be counted properly by the electronic
counter.
Procedure:
The following procedure was implemented in order for determination or mapping of the gamma energy
spectrum of the photons emitted by the Cesium – 137 source.
Before starting the experiment it was made sure that all electronic devices (like scintillation
detector, counter, etc) are properly connected and switched on.
Cesium – 137 137 5 𝐶𝑠 source was placed at the top of the scintillation detector and was covered
with a plastic lid.
The high voltage required for electron multiplication in PMT was set to 750 volts.
The signal from the PMT was viewed on an oscilloscope (Figure 3) and for proper counting the
signal was further amplified 1.6 times by setting the 10 turn gain helipot to 6.
Height of the above pulse sets an upper bound on the baseline voltage which in this case was about
1.8 volts.
An appropriate window size was chosen. Considering the time constraint, we choose window size
to be 40 mV. The number of runs was set to 3 with time of each run equal to 10 sec.
Starting from zero baseline voltage, in steps of 40 mV, number of counts in each run was recorded.
As mentioned above this was done up to baseline voltage 1800 mV.
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Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata 23rd Feb – 2nd Mar 2010
The spectrum was further resolved close to the maxima / photo peak by reducing the window to 20
mV.
Table 1: For recording no. of counts versus baseline voltage for Cs-137 source.
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Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata 23rd Feb – 2nd Mar 2010
25 960 40 606 621 607 611 61
26 1000 40 1087 1065 1240 1131 113
27 1040 40 835 834 886 852 85
28 1080 40 680 643 689 671 67
29 1120 40 548 520 558 542 54
30 1160 40 489 522 489 500 50
31 1200 40 487 512 454 484 48
32 1240 40 542 554 550 549 55
33 1280 40 667 702 723 697 70
34 1320 40 924 996 904 941 94
35 1360 40 1269 1311 1237 1272 127
36 1400 40 1555 1302 1350 1402 140
37 1440 40 1957 2913 1886 2252 225
38 1480 40 8111 8355 8357 8274 827
39 1520 40 5895 6760 5479 6045 604
40 1560 40 4172 4734 4711 4539 454
41 1600 40 6080 6174 6316 6190 619
42 1640 40 6725 4309 4844 5293 529
43 1680 40 175 259 163 199 20
44 1720 40 178 233 221 211 21
45 1760 40 201 167 197 188 19
46 1800 40 175 158 140 158 16
800
700
Mean Counts per sec.
600
500
400
300
200
100
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Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata 23rd Feb – 2nd Mar 2010
Table 2: Further resolution near maxima / photo peak (Baseline 1440 to 1520 mV) with a smaller sized
window.
2
𝑥 − 1477
𝑦 = 345.5 exp −
32.7
Clearly from above we have, baseline corresponding to the maxima or photo peak is equal to 1477 mV.
Standard deviation 𝜎 of the curve is 23.1 mV. So, full width at half maximum (FWHM) which is given by,
𝐹𝑊𝐻𝑀 = 2𝜎 2 ln 2 = 54.4 mV
So, resolution which is,
𝐹𝑊𝐻𝑀
𝑅𝑒𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 =
𝐵𝑎𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑘
54.4
= = 0.037
1477
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Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata 23rd Feb – 2nd Mar 2010
Conclusions:
The photo peak or maxima is obtained at baseline voltage equal to 1.47 volts or (1.46 – 1.48 V).
Mean counts per sec with a window size of 40 mV and baseline voltage between 0 to 0.95 V are
significant (above 175 mV) and this may be due to the phenomenon of Compton Scattering
(explained above).
The resolution of the detector is found to be 0.037 or 3.7%.
NOTE: The baseline voltage can be calibrated in general, with the energy of the gamma photons using the
known energy values corresponding to the photo peak(s) for some radioactive material (like Co-60), just as
is done in the multi-channel analyzer systems.
References:
Wikipedia.org (http://en.wikipedia.org)
Supplied supplementary reading material and User’s Manual.
Nuclear Physics by S. N. Ghoshal
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