Energy Measurements

Energy Measurements

In general, a nuclear radiation is detected and its properties are determined from the electrical pulse formed at the output circuit of a detector. In contrast to charged particles, which deposit energy continuously along the track, photon interactions are localized. In passing through the detector medium photons will traverse a certain distance unaffected, until depositing energy either by Photoelectric absorption, Compton scattering or Pair production. Photoelectric absorption: Photon deposits its total energy in a single interaction with the detector material, resulting in the liberation of a photoelectron. The X-rays emitted by the decay of the ionized atom to its ground state are also absorbed in the detector.

Fig1: Photoelectric absorption in differential pulse height ray spectrum Compton Scattering: The photon scatters off an electron and hence the photon is detected with decreased energy. The photon scattered at back-angle of 180o imposes an upper bound on the energy of the scattered electron. This is referred to as the Compton Edge. The energy of the back-scattered is given by

Lecture Note: Nuclear Measurement II

UGC-DAE CSR, Kolkata

Energy Measurements

Fig 2: Compton Edge For large incident photon energies (E > 1 MeV), the Compton Edge is typically 250 keV lower than the photo-peak as

Pair production: If the photon energy is twice the mass of the electron, electron-positron pairs can be produced. This process is dominant only at gamma ray energies of several MeV. The excess photon energy beyond 2m0c2 goes into the kinetic energy shared between the electron and the positron.

Single peak if electron and positron energy captured by detector

Fig 3: The result of such interactions is the appearance of a fixed number of information carriers created due to the interaction of the incident radiation with matter. For a gas detector, these information carriers are the positive and negative

Lecture Note: Nuclear Measurement II

UGC-DAE CSR, Kolkata

Energy Measurements ions while for a semiconductor detector they are the electron-hole pairs liberated. The total number of information carriers created is directly related to the energy deposited in the detector. These information carriers are then collected and processed to obtain the information about the incident radiation. For example in a semi-conductor detector the total number of electron-hole pairs created due to the interaction of the incident radiation gives us a total charge which is related to the energy of the incident radiation. The charge is collected by the imposition of an electric field within the detector. This charge is then converted into an equivalent voltage pulse.

The output of the detector is then fed to a preamplifier. In energy spectroscopy the pre-amplifier converts the detector charge into a voltage and is capable of driving the signal over a long cable to the main amplifier.

Fig 4:Preamplifier

Lecture Note: Nuclear Measurement II

UGC-DAE CSR, Kolkata

Energy Measurements The output of the charge sensitive amplifier is proportional to the charge in the pulse provided by the detector. So the distribution of pulse amplitude reflects the corresponding distribution in energy of the incident radiation. The signal and noise are both typically of the order of mv, so the S/N ratio is not optimal. The typical rise time of HPGe is around few ns, while the pulse has a long tail (decay time) typically a few microseconds long as shown in the figure below:

Fig 5: Preamplifier output as seen on a C.R.O The pre-amplifier output is typically a few mv and it needs to be amplified up to a maximum of 10 V, so that the measurements and recording could be done with greater ease and accuracy. In energy spectroscopy the height of the pre-amplifier output is proportional to the energy of the incident radiation. The mere amplification of the preamplifier output is not done as it contains both high and low frequency noise (any undesired fluctuations that appears superimposed on a signal source in the entire frequency domain) components, which deteriorates the S/N ratio. The long tail of the preamplifier pulse limits the count-rate. Hence the pulse is shaped by using special filters to enhance both the S/N and the count-rate capability. A differentiator reduces the fall time and an integrator increases the rise time.

Fig 6: a) Differentiator

b) Integrator

Lecture Note: Nuclear Measurement II

UGC-DAE CSR, Kolkata

Energy Measurements For a reasonable S/N one differentiator followed by two or more integrators is essential.

Fig 7: RC-CR pulse shaping. The output from a spectroscopy amplifier is shown below. The shaping time is defined as the time equivalent of the standard deviation of the Gaussian output pulse.

Fig 8: Output of a Linear Amplifier shaped linear pulse, as seen on a C.R.O The processing time for the amplifier (base-base time) is typically around 5

where is the shaping time, while the FWHM of the pulse is typically ~ 2.3 . The choice for the shaping time is obtained following a compromise between the optimal charge collection time and the system dead-time. For HPGe detectors it is typically set to 3-4 s, while scintillator detectors are operated with t = 0.5 1 s. Other pulse shaping that is performed within the amplifier is the Pole-Zero cancellation as well as the Baseline restorer.

Lecture Note: Nuclear Measurement II

UGC-DAE CSR, Kolkata

Energy Measurements Pole-Zero Cancellation: The preamplifier output pulse when passing through a differentiator has a long tail with a negative undershoot. This has the disadvantage of an increased amplifier dead-time (time for which the amplifier is inactive and does not process any pulses) and a pile-up of the second pulse on the tail of the first. This results in an erroneous measurement of the pulse-height and introduces an error in the measured energy. A pole-zero cancellation could be qualitatively described as a sum of the differentiated pulse and a fraction Rd / (Rd+Rpz), so that the negative portion of the differentiated pulse is removed. Thus Pole Zero Cancellation is a technique in which the network is modified to again restore the simple exponential output without the undershoot as shown in the figure below:

Fig 9: Amplifier output before Pole Zero Cancellation as seen on a C.R.O A correct setting of the PZ (shown in the diagram below) results in an enhanced performance at high counting rates, as the amplifier output returns smoothly to the baseline.

Lecture Note: Nuclear Measurement II

UGC-DAE CSR, Kolkata

Energy Measurements

Fig 10: Amplifier output after Pole Zero Cancellation as seen on a C.R.O Pile-up: Pulses from a radiation detector are randomly spaced in time. This leads to interfering effects between pulses when counting rates are high. These effects are called Pile-up. A pileup rejecter uses timing circuitry to detect and reject events where two gamma rays pulses overlap. The pileup rejecter provides a logic pulse that cane be used to block the further processing of pulses. The Pile Up Reject pulse is generated as soon as the amplifier starts processing the pulse and is set de-activated when the amplifier completes the pulse processing. Base Line Restoration: After the pulse has been shaped and amplified there are slow baseline fluctuations due to pickup from extraneous sources in the neighbourhood. The baseline therefore has to be restored to zero. BLR circuit is usually present at the output stage and maintains a stable baseline. The amplifier raises a BUSY signal when it starts processing the signal from the pre-amplifier. This is depicted below:

Lecture Note: Nuclear Measurement II

UGC-DAE CSR, Kolkata

Energy Measurements

Fig 11: Busy signal, as seen on a C.R.O The output of a linear amplifier is given to a MCA.MCA basically consists of an ADC and a memory. The ADC converts an analog pulse amplitude to an equivalent digital number which is then stored in an appropriate memory bin. An ADC typically accepts a 0-10 V linear pulse. This analog signal is then digitized into the available channels. If the ADC is a 1K ADC i.e. it has 1024 channels available for digitizing the input analog pulse then 0 V would correspond to 0 channel 10 V would correspond to 1024 channel Hence, we would be operating at 10V/1024 channels, i.e ~ 0.01 V/channel. Depending on the detector used, the channels are so chosen such that the peaks is stored in about 5-10 channels. If more number of channels are used then we have an increase in the statistical noise, whereas a small number of channels would result in poor resolution.

Lecture Note: Nuclear Measurement II

UGC-DAE CSR, Kolkata