Voltage dependent pulse shape analysis of Geiger-Müller counter

Abstract

Abstract Detailed pulse shape analysis of a Geiger-Muller counter is performed to understand the pulse shape dependence on operating voltage. New data is presented to demonstrate that not all pulses generated in a GM counter are identical. In fact, there is a strong correlation between the operating voltage and the pulse shape. Similar to detector deadtime, pulse shapes fall in three distinct regions. For low voltage region, where deadtime was reported to reduce with increasing voltage, pulse generated in this region was observed to have a fixed pulse width with a variable tail. The pulse width and fall time of the tail was observed to be a function of applied voltage; exponentially reducing with increasing voltage with an exponent of negative 6E-04 and 2E-03 respectively. The second region showed a pulse without any significant tail. During this time the detector deadtime was earlier reported to be at its minimum. The highest voltage region demonstrated a different deadtime mechanism where the second pulse was reduced in width. During this time the deadtime seemed to be increasing with increasing voltage. This data allows us to gain some unique insight into the phenomenon of GM detector deadtime not reported thus far.