Characterization of Fast Scintillator Detectors using Digital Data Acquisition System

Scintillator detectors coupled with fast photo-multiplier tubes (PMT) are used extensively in experimental -ray spectroscopy. Although the energy resolutions of these detectors are very poor than the standard Ge detectors, much better timing resolution has made these the detectors of choice while dealing with timing measurements. Fast scintillator detectors are used extensively to measure a wide range of lifetime of nuclear excited states using centroid difference method. Furthermore, these can be used as multiplicity filters and also as Compton suppression shields to Ge detectors. In the present work, several fast scintillator detectors, such as, LaBr3 (Ce), BaF2, BGO have been characterized by using different radioactive sources (152Eu, 60Co, 22Na). A state-of-the-art digital signal processing based data acquisition system has been used to record the energy and timing spectra. The energy and timing resolutions of the detectors were studied in detail. The detection efficiency of LaBr3 (Ce) has been compared with that of the clover Ge detector.