Recursive algorithms for digital implementation of neutron/gamma discrimination in liquid scintillation detectors

Charge-comparison and zero-crossing techniques are the two most common methods of neutron-gamma discrimination in liquid scintillation detectors in analog domain. To implement these methods on a digital hardware such as field programmable gate array (FPGA), algorithms with low computational requirements are required. This paper reports on recursive algorithms for charge-comparison and zero-crossing techniques, suitable for real-time implementation on a digital hardware. The performance of the algorithms is examined using an experimental setup as well.