PARTICLE DISCRIMINATOR FOR THE IDENTIFICATION OF LIGHT CHARGED-PARTICLES WITH CSI(TL) SCINTILLATOR PLUS PIN PHOTODIODE DETECTOR

A particle discriminator exploiting the ballistic deficit effect for p ulse shape discrimination has been developed for CsI(Tl) scintillator + PIN photodiode charged-particle detectors. The method is theoretical ly investigated and it is shown that the figure of merit of the partic le separation is mainly governed by the absolute value of the differen tial quotient of the rise time dependent ballistic deficit. As the act ual particle discriminator contains shaping amplifiers, baseline resto rer, pile-up rejector and analog-to-digital converters, it directly ac cepts signals from a charge-sensitive preamplifier, and its outputs de liver the type and the energy of the particles in the form of eight-bi t digital codes. The performance of the particle discriminator is char acterised by the figure-of-merit measured as a function of the particl e energy.