Setup and operation of gamma-ray measurement systems to maximize detector lifetime and stability

Abstract

The details for optimizing gamma-ray measurement system for specific applications are not always well understood. The setup and operation of a system plays an important role in performance aspects such as maximizing detector lifetime, stability and minimizing the signal to noise ratio. In addition to system setup and operation, the effects of scintillation detector design and accompanying electronics (PMT) are discussed with respect to both gross counting and spectroscopy measurements in order to obtain reliable results. Data has been taken with various sodium iodide scintillation detectors to study system stability during transient such as power cycling and count rate fluctuations. These fluctuations may introduce substantial measurement uncertainty, and if not accounted for will propagate into an analyses. The above transients can also affect the detector lifetime, and if the system conditions are monitored properly, they can be used as a predictive tool for determining the useful life of a detector. Data is also presented to examine counting statistics in an overlapping spectrum as a function of spectral resolution and count rate. The objective is to determine the optimum counting time for the spectrum to reach a statistically stable shape. The data is reduced by examining the standard deviation of fitted Gaussian curves at ten second intervals. The result is a contour plat showing the time needed to reach stability, which increase with spectral resolution and decrease with a rising count rate.