Discrimination of pile up in a fission fragment detection experiment

In this work the problem introduced in a fission experiment by the pile-up due to a strong α-background has been addressed. A novel scheme has been developed, able to reject more than 90% of pile-up affected pulses in a plutonium sample with an activity of ∼1 MBq. This procedure is necessary in order to improve the resolution to an acceptable level. With a proper calibration, however, the global mean energy and mass of the fragments are correctly reproduced both with and without pile-up rejection.