Dead Time of Scintillation Counters

The dead time or resolving time is the minimum time that can elapse after the arrival of two successive particles and still result in two separate pulses (see Sec. 

For a scintillation counter this time is equal to the sum of three time intervals  

Time it takes to produce the scintillation, essentially equal to the decay time of the scintillator (see Eq. 6.1 and Tables 6.1 and 6.3). 

Time it takes for electron multiplication in the phototube, of the order of 20-40 ns. 

Time it takes to amplify the signal and record it by a scaler. The resolving time of commercial scalers is of the order of 1 /xs. The time taken for amplification and discrimination is negligible. 

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