TIME STATISTICS OF THE PHOTOELECTRON EMISSION PROCESS IN SCINTILLATION-COUNTERS

In this work the statistical time properties of the photoelectron emis sion process in scintillation counters are evaluated assuming that the total number of emitted photoelectrons is distributed according to a generic random distribution. Under this general assumption, the probab ility density function of the time of emission of the ith photoelectro n is computed; it is also demonstrated that if the number of emitted p hotoelectrons is Poisson distributed, this probability density functio n reduces to the expression already published for this particular case . Finally the procedure adopted is extended to give the expressions pr edicting the performances of organic scintillators for the pulse shape discrimination of particles of different type.