Utilization of Concurrently Gathered Pulser Data for Complete Spectral Validation of Gamma-Ray Spectra from Germanium Detectors

Some of the capabilities and limitations of using concurrently gathered pulser data for energy calibration, dead time correction, and pile-up loss correction of gamma ray spectra from germanium detectors have been investigated. This report deals with the pulser, charge injection into the charge sensitive preamplifier, hardware separation of gamma and pulser events, and analysis techniques to improve the accuracy of gamma peak area corrections from pulser data. Data is presented indicating achievable short and long term energy calibration stability of better than .01% and accuracy of rate dependent peak area loss corrections of +1% up to 50,000 pulses per second (pps) and +2.5% up to 100,000 pps, energy i ndependent.