Pulse-Shape Discrimination PSD

Name Energy band Energy (eV) Telescope type Instruments 

Low energy keV to MeV lO -lO Collimated scintillator, Coded-aperture telescopes HEAO, SMM, GRANAT/SIGMA, CGRO/BATSE, HETE-2, Swift, CGRO/OSSE, INTEGRAL, HESSI 

Medium energy MeV 10 Compton telescopes CGRO/COMPTEL 

High energy MeV toGeV 10 -10 Pair-production telescopes SAS-2, COS-B, CGRO/EGRET, GLAST 

Ultra high energy (UHE) TeV to PeV 10 2 10 Ground-based optical Cherenkov and particle detection CASA-MIA, CYGNUS, MILAGRO, HEGRA 

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Since the fast centrifuge system SISAK is equipped with liquid scintillation counting LSC [12,58], it is in principle capable of investigating short-lived a-decaying nuclides of the transactinides, p/y pulses and a pulses are distinguished by pulse-shape discrimination PSD and pile-up pulses are rejected by a pile-up rejection system PUR. This analog electronics proved to result in insufficient background suppression. Thus, two new approaches... 

Pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) is the name given to a process that differentiates pulses produced by different types of particles in the same detector. Although PSD has found many applications, its most common use is to discriminate between pulses generated by neutrons and gammas in organic scintillators (see also Chap. 14), and it is this type of PSD that will be discussed. 

PULSE SHAPE DISCRIMINATION (PSD) Electronic methods for separating pulses of differing shape, thus enabling pulses from one type of radiation to be separated from those of another. For example in neutron detectors, neutrons may be separated from gammas by PSD. Same as pulse shape analysis, PSA. 

Where it is required to measure neutrons in the presence of a significant y-ray background, it is possible to make use of the properties of certain scintillators to distinguish the pulses produced by neutrons from those due to y rays. This is known as a pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) system. In stilbene and some organic liquid scintillators, the pulse rise time for the fluorescence caused by the secondary electrons from a y-ray interaction is considerably shorter than that due to the recoil protons produced by neutron scattering. By the use of fast timing discriminators, it is possible to separate the pulses caused by neutrons from those due to the y rays. 

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