Particle discriminator for the identification of light charged particles with CsI(Tl) scintillator + PIN photodiode detector

A particle discriminator exploiting the ballistic deficit effect for pulse shape discrimination has been developed for CsI(Tl) scintillator + PIN photodiode charged-particle detectors. The method is theoretically investigated and it is shown that the figure of merit of the particle separation is mainly governed by the absolute value of the differential quotient of the rise time dependent ballistic deficit. As the actual particle discriminator contains shaping amplifiers, baseline restorer, pile-up rejector and analog-to-digital converters, it directly accepts signals from a charge-sensitive preamplifier, and its outputs deliver the type and the energy of the particles in the form of eight-bit digital codes. The performance of the particle discriminator is characterised by the figure-of-merit measured as a function of the particle energy.