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NaI(Tl) scintillators can detect thermal neutrons with surprising efficiency, even in the presence of ambient gamma radiation. This is due to a peculiarity of the 128I level scheme. Deexcitation cascades following neutron captures in 127I, a main constituent of NaI with quite large neutron capture cross section, unexpectedly often involve the 167.4 keV state of 128I with 175 ns half-life, which feeds another isomeric level at 137.9 keV having a half-life of 845 ns. The 29.5 keV transition between both levels, as well as the subsequent deexcitation sequence to ground state comprising 137.9 keV sum energy, are almost certainly absorbed in the crystal. Signals including three scintillation pulses within few microseconds, the first one caused by a prompt part of the cascade, the second and third one disclosing 30 and 138 keV energy depositions and characteristic delays, are clearly related to such neutron captures. Double-pulse sequences comprising only the primary pulse and a delayed 138 keV signal are also distinctive but more prone to load-dependent background by random pulse pileups. This article demonstrates neutron detection with a Ø2” $\times2$ ” NaI(Tl) scintillation detector by finding and analyzing such double- and triple-pulse sequences in digitized detector signals. It quantifies effect and background rates as a function of the detector load ranging up to 30 kcps. Complementary measurements with a 6Li codoped Ø2” $\times2$ ” NaI(Tl) (NaIL) scintillator allow relating the neutron detection yield by delayed-coincidence counting to the 6Li capture rate in the same crystal and thus to evaluate prospects and limits of this technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Upgrades to the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory will provide a second target station and an increased neutron flux, which will offer a more powerful tool for neutron reflectometry. To fully utilize the higher neutron flux, a high-speed, neutron-imaging device (an imaging plane) specifically for reflectometry is required. The neutron imaging plane requires a detection efficiency of 60% for 2 Å neutrons for event rates exceeding 2 Mcps/cm2 with less than 10% dead time. A novel organic glass scintillator material loaded with a boron compound demonstrated good neutron sensitivity. Simulations show that the detection efficiency for thermal neutrons can reach 60% with a 500- $\mu \text{m}$ thickness, if the glass is loaded with 99% enriched $^{10}\text{B}$ compound at 10% wt. A lower concentration of 95% enrichment at 5% wt loading can provide 60% efficiency with a thickness slightly above 1 mm. The decay time of the scintillator is less than 100 ns, providing a fast response for high rate counting. The instrument design is based on detecting the neutron with a fast scintillation material and integrating silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) with high-speed digital electronics. Traditional pulse sampling using a high-speed analog to digital converter (ADC) to conduct pulse shape discrimination is not viable for imaging, and a new technique has been formulated for this material using a time over threshold (TOT) method to isolate neutrons from gamma-ray interactions. The gamma-neutron peak separation is greater than two sigma, and with a thin scintillator, the gamma-ray rejection per detected neutron should meet the design specification of $10^{-6}$. Using the TOT method, the digital information to be processed by an interfacing ADC is reduced allowing for readout per SiPM, providing a position resolution close to 1 mm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, it is possible to accelerate bunches of particles in the interaction of ultrahigh intensity (UHI) laser pulses with matter. Electrons, protons, ions, and high-energy photon beams can be produced in experiments and reach kinetic energies close to hundreds of megaelectronvolts for protons and gigaelectronvolts for electrons and for the associated Bremsstrahlung photons. At these energies, these beams can induce a large variety of nuclear reactions, which can be detected and studied using $\gamma $ -ray spectroscopy techniques. At standard accelerator facilities, scintillator detectors are commonly used to perform prompt $\gamma $ -ray spectrometry studies. However, during laser–matter interactions, high fluxes of X-rays (mostly soft) are generated, which lead to instantaneous huge energy deposits (~1 $\mu \text{J}$) in these scintillators. Depending on the laser characteristics (energy and pulse duration), the detector recovery time after these X-ray flashes can reach several milliseconds, which makes any prompt or “in beam” measurement impossible. The origin of this long-duration signal is investigated in the case of a LaBr3 crystal coupled to different photodetectors. While it was impossible using standard photomultiplier tubes to detect $\gamma $ -ray emissions before a few milliseconds after a laser shot, we could, using a hybrid photodiode, resolve single $\gamma $ -ray emission a few tens of microseconds after the laser shot. Furthermore, we have also shown that the LaBr3 scintillator presents an unexpected long-lived light emission (afterglow). Directions are suggested for future studies in order to minimize the effects of this afterglow emission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scintillation detectors offer a single-step detection method for fast neutrons and necessitate real-time acquisition, whereas this is redundant in two-stage thermal detection systems using helium-3 and lithium-6, where the fast neutrons need to be thermalized prior to detection. The relative affordability of scintillation detectors and the associated fast digital acquisition systems have enabled entirely new measurement setups that can consist of sizeable detector arrays. These detectors in most cases rely on photomultiplier tubes, which have significant tolerances and result in variations in detector response functions. The detector tolerances and other environmental instabilities must be accounted for in measurements that depend on matched detector performance. This paper presents recent advances made to a high-speed FPGA-based digitizer. The technology described offers a complete solution for fast-neutron scintillation detectors by integrating multichannel high-speed data acquisition technology with dedicated detector high-voltage supplies. This configuration has significant advantages for large detector arrays that require uniform detector responses. We report on bespoke control software and firmware techniques that exploit real-time functionality to reduce setup and acquisition time, increase repeatability, and reduce statistical uncertainties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Basic concepts and the development of a high counting rate digital spectrometry system based on efficient ADCs and latest available FPGA are presented with the aim of using such a system, coupled to fast scintillators, in plasma experiments. The prototype system is a 1 channel 12-bit 1 GSPS digitizer with 2~\mathrm V\mathrm {pp} input voltage. Preliminary results tested with different radioactive sources are shown for low (0.03 Mcps) and high (2.2 Mcps) counting rates. A comparison of energy spectra and energy resolution with what obtained by a commercial device is also shown. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The shape of the nuclear signal from scintillators contains information about the detection material from which it originated and its current temperature. A digital filter for this type of signals is presented that automatically extracts both of these pieces of information from the shape of the signals and controls the temperature dependency of the resolution by continuous adaption to this shape. Hereby, nuclear signals are a-priori modelled by an all-pole filter. The concept combines a deconvolution approach based on this model with a least-mean-squares iteration. Beneath the iteration, there is a continuous assessment of the signal shape where the mean-squared distance between the assumed shape and measured shape acts as control parameter for the resolution. From the information stored inside the dynamic filter parameters, the material characteristics are retrieved to identify the detector material. An implementation into a multi-channel-analyser is shown and the technique is verified under real-world environmental conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the merits of different event parameters in the identification of Light Charged Particles (LCPs) with CsI(Tl) scintillators read out by photodiodes at high incident energy (400 MeV/u). This investigation is made possible by digital signal processing the output signals. As in the conventional analogue case, the digitized signals allow the discrimination of light charged particles by computing the fast and slow components. In addition other identification parameters as the rise time of the output pulses of the CsI(Tl) come out nearly for free. Aim of this paper is the investigation of novel identification plots and the probe of their merits, in particular at relativistic energies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A Compact Neutron Spectrometer (CNS) has been developed to measure the neutron emission spectra in Joint European Torus (JET) fusion plasma experiments. The spectrometer, based on a liquid scintillation detector (BC501A), is equipped with a Digital Pulse Shape Discrimination (DPSD) acquisition system for neutron (n) and gamma-ray (\gamma) separation. The CNS enables recording the n and \gamma pulse height spectra (PHS) up to total count rates of \sim10^6 s^- 1. Energy resolution, after PHS unfolding, will be <2\\% for 14 MeV neutrons and <4\\% for 2.5 MeV neutrons. The work done by ENEA-Frascati and Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) respectively in the assembly and test of DPSD and scintillation detector, along with the first results obtained by the spectrometer in JET plasma experiments are presented. The experience obtained with CNS in JET will contribute to the development of neutron spectrometers suitable for applications in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We are currently developing a prototype monolithic scintillator PET detector module based on neural network position estimators. The detector module comprises a 25.5~mm\times 25.5~mm\times 10~mm LYSO crystal coupled to a Hamamatsu 64 channels multi-anode PMT H7546B. The electronics for the detector module reads out all the signal channels, which represents the distribution of the scintillating light for each \gamma event, and calculates the impinging position according to the pre-defined neural network algorithms if the event satisfies the energy and timing selection conditions. Compared with classical pixelated detectors, a monolithic scintillator based detector module features a simpler design, lower cost, and better energy resolution, but has lower signal to noise ratio and a more complicated signal readout scheme and data processing. By Monte-Carlo simulation, the performances of several readout schemes were compared. An optimized readout scheme which combines the 64 channels into 16 digitized signals was adopted in our electronics design. After the high resolution signal waveform digitization, an FPGA takes charge of the remaining digital signal processing, including the on-line hardware execution of the neural network positioning algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe the development of readout electronics for fast radiation detectors that digitize signals at a rate of 500 MHz, process the digital data stream to measure pulse heights, bin the results in on-board MCA spectra, and optionally capture waveforms for pulse shape analysis. The electronics are targeted for applications requiring good energy resolution and precise timing, for example life time measurements on exotic nuclei, timing measurements with fast scintillators such as LaBr3 or BaF2, or pulse shape analysis with liquid scintillators or phoswich detectors. Upgrading the existing XIA Pixie-4 spectrometer design with a 12-bit, 500 MHz analog to digital converter, we built a prototype of a 4-channel electronics module and evaluated its performance in terms of energy resolution, timing resolution, and improvements in pulse shape analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A digital pulse-shape method (DPSM) is proposed to improve the time resolution of a BaF2 scintillation detector for low-energy gamma rays. By using chi-square fitting of digitally measured pulse shapes with calculated shapes, the proposed DPSM determined the pulse height and the start time corresponding to the deposited energy and the interaction moment, respectively, of gamma rays incident on the BaF2 scintillator. We calculated theoretical pulse shapes by considering light output, light-attenuation length, and light path within the scintillator. In particular, we calculated the light path inside the scintillator by using a Monte Carlo method. We performed coincidence measurements for gamma rays emitted from 22Na and 133Ba standard sources with two cylindrical BaF2 scintillation detectors and then we obtained a time resolution of around 6 ns for 81-keV and 511-keV gamma rays by using the DPSM. Although time resolution obtained using the DPSM was inferior to that obtained using a conventional analog signal process, it had a consistent value irrespective of gamma-ray energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the potentials of digitally sampling scintillation pulses techniques for positron emission tomography (PET) in this paper, focusing on the determination of the event time. We have built, and continue building, a digital library of PET event waveforms generated with various combinations of photo-detectors and scintillator materials, with various crystal sizes. Events in this digital library are obtained at a high sampling of 20 GSps (Giga-samples per second) so that their waveforms are recorded with high accuracy. To explore the potential advantages of digitally sampling scintillation pulses, we employ a dataset in the above-mentioned library to evaluate two methods for digitizing the event pulses and linear interpolation techniques to analyze the resulting digital samples. Our results show that the two digitization methods that we studied can yield a coincidence timing resolution of about 300 ps FWHM when applied to events generated by a pair of LSO + PMT detector units. This timing resolution is comparable with that is achieved by the same detector pair with a constant fraction discriminator (CFD). As a benchmark, regular-time sampling (RTS) method, usually implemented with very fast traditional analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) for digitizing scintillation pulses, is not feasible for a multi-channel system like a PET system. Digitizing scintillation pulses with multi-voltage threshold (MVT) method could be implemented at a reasonable cost for a PET system. With digitized PET event samples, various digital signal processing (DSP) techniques can be implemented to determine event arrival time. Our results have therefore demonstrated the promising potentials of digitally sampling scintillation pulses techniques in PET imaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of NE102A-BaF2 phoswich detector drastically improves the particle identification with respect to BaF2 crystals. To better exploit the possibility of light ion discrimination we have applied digital signal processing to the signals, on-beam collected with NE102A-BaF2 phoswich. We present the results obtained for the heavy ion charge identification (up to Z = 50) and light particle mass identification, using digital pulse shape acquisition and a 12-bit, 2 GSample/s sampling analog to digital converter. The results concerning the response of BaF2 -plastic phoswich to the reaction products issued at forward angles in the collision of 35.1 MeV/u 124Sn beam on 64Ni target have been obtained at the Superconducting Cyclotron of the Laboratori Nazionali del Sud in Catania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We developed a stand-alone multifunctional pulse processing device based on a 20 MHz and 10 bit flash analog to digital converter. This module has the functions of a peak-sensing ADC, a pulse area-sensing ADC, a time tag by a digital constant fraction discrimination method and a pulse counter. Moreover, it can be used for FADC with 50 μs waveform length for the purpose of monitoring. It has four independent channels. The external trigger and internal trigger functions are implemented and internally triggered signals which can be sent out by the trigger output connector. All of these functions are implemented in the field programmable gate array (FPGA). It operates with a single 5 V DC supply and digitized data can be directly transferred to the host computer by a 100 Mbps Ethernet port. Performance test results will be reported on which include a conventional crystal scintillator as well as liquid scintillator. The module can be used for the signal processing of the various radiation detectors for small nuclear and high energy laboratory experiments, nuclear spectroscopy and particle and radiation detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PET imaging scanners based on all-digital architecture offer greater data processing flexibility and the possibility to recalibrate the system with simple software procedures. The LabPET scanner, designed at the Université de Sherbrooke, is one such device. It is built around dual LYSO/LGSO scintillators in a phoswich arrangement coupled to Avalanche Photodiodes (APD) and combined with highly parallel readout and processing electronics. This approach enables the implementation of advanced real time digital signal processing methods to compute energy resolution, crystal identification and the arrival time of events. Timing extraction represents the highest challenge because of the low sampling frequency (45 MHz), the quantization error and the presence of a Zero Order Hold (ZOH) in the system. The aim of this paper is to present a method to increase coincidence time accuracy by adequately addressing each of these limitations. The proposed method uses a Deconvolution concept based on adaptive filter theory preceded by Cubic Spline interpolation to improve digital timing performance. The method achieves 4.5 ns, 8.2 ns, and 6.5 ns timing resolution with LYSO-LYSO, LGSO-LGSO and mixed crystals phoswich coincidences, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detectors based on LYSO and LGSO scintillators in a phoswich arrangement coupled to an avalanche photodiode are used in the LabPETtrade, an all-digital positron emission tomography (PET) scanner for small animal imaging developed in Sherbrooke. A Wiener filter based crystal identification (CI) algorithm achieving excellent discrimination accuracy was recently proposed for crystal identification of LYSO-LGSO phoswich detectors . This algorithm was based on estimating parameters describing the scintillation decay time constant and the light yield of events sampled at 45 MSPS. The CI process was performed by applying a threshold on the scintillation decay parameter of events. The light yield was not considered in the CI process even if it should be. We propose a 2-fold faster CI approach which takes both the scintillation decay and light yield coefficients of each crystal into consideration. The new algorithm uses the previous Wiener filter based algorithm as a calibration process in order to evaluate the model of each individual crystal. The DAQ chain model as a priori knowledge is then incorporated into the model of each crystal and the output signal is estimated. The CI is performed by evaluating a single parameter representing the percentage contribution of each crystal characteristics in the event signal. The CI algorithm demonstrated a discrimination rate accuracy for LYSO-LGSO LabPET detectors and for LSO-GSO crystals in phoswich arrangement for 511 keV events. Although a calibration is required, the real-time implementation of the new CI algorithm needs 2 times less direct operations. An FPGA clocked at 400 MHz can process up to 25 M events/sec with such an algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the potential of 6LiI(Eu)/photodiode (PD) detector systems for application as neutron counters in radioisotope identification devices (RIID). Those are exposed to mixed neutron-gamma fields. An effective suppression of signals due to gamma interactions with the scintillator or the PD bulk material is of major importance since neutron alarms in RIID are triggered by a few single neutron counts; any gamma signal not rejected may generate a false neutron alarm. Measurements demonstrated that digital signal processing combined with simultaneous pulse height and pulse shape analysis can provide efficient neutron-gamma discrimination. The results were obtained with a compact, basic detector configuration and sampling rates of only 10 MS/s. Such systems can be realized with state-of-the-art miniaturized electronics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on the design of a data acquisition (DAQ) module for a small animal PET camera developed at our institutes. During the design an important guideline was to develop a system which is built up from strictly identical DAQ modules, and which has no built-in hardware limitation on the maximum number of modules. The developed DAQ module comprises of an LSO scintillator crystal block, a position sensitive PMT, analog signal conditioning circuits, a digitizer, an field programmable gate array (FPGA) for digital signal processing, and a communication module through which the collected data are sent to a cluster of computers for postprocessing and storage. Instead of implementing hardware coincidence detection between the modules, we attach a precise time stamp to each event in our design, and the coincidence is determined by the data collecting computers during postprocessing. The digital CFD algorithm implemented in the FPGA gives a time resolution of 2 ns FWHM for real detector signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an Optimal Filtering (OF) algorithm to reconstruct the energy, time and pedestal of a photomultiplier signal from its digital samples. The OF algorithm was first developed for liquid ionization calorimeters, its implementation in scintillator calorimeters, specifically in the ATLAS hadronic Tile calorimeter (TileCal), is the aim of this study. The objective is to implement the algorithm on the DSPs of the Read Out Driver cards in order to reconstruct online the energy of the calorimeter and provide it to the second level trigger. The algorithm is tested and compared with a plain filtering algorithm using both calibration and real data from the TileCal detector. The results are promising specially in the regions where the electronic noise contributes significantly to the resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]