Gas proportional scintillation counter pulse-signature analysis using digital techniques

The use of short shaping time-constants (50 ns) followed by digital sampling of gas proportional scintillation counter pulses is investigated. Such short shaping time causes each pulse to closely resemble the scintillation light burst, allowing for an effective pulse-signature analysis. Pulse amplitude is obtained by numerical integration of the digital pulse samples. The shorter total pulse durations, lead to pulse-height distributions that are much less dependent on the total interaction rate occurring in the detector. Total interaction rates up to 12 k s−1 can be tolerated without significant degradation of the obtained pulse-height distribution. It was also verified that the maximum throughput achieved by the digital pulse-height analyser improves from 1 to 1.7 k s−1 when using the short shaping time-constants.