Digital discrimination of neutrons and gamma-rays in organic scintillation detectors using moment analysis

Rev Sci Instrum. 2012 Sep;83(9):093507. doi: 10.1063/1.4754633.

Abstract

Digital discrimination of neutron and gamma-ray events in an organic scintillator has been investigated by moment analysis. Signals induced by an americium-beryllium (Am/Be) isotropic neutron source in a stilbene crystal detector have been sampled with a flash analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) of 1 GSamples/s sampling rate and 10-bit vertical resolution. Neutrons and gamma-rays have been successfully discriminated with a threshold corresponding to gamma-ray energy about 217 keV. Moment analysis has also been verified against the results assessed by a time-of-flight (TOF) measurement. It is shown that the classification of neutrons and gamma-rays afforded by moment analysis is consistent with that achieved by digital TOF measurement. This method has been applied to analyze the data acquired from the stilbene crystal detector in mixed radiation field of the HL-2A tokamak deuterium plasma discharges and the results are described.