A COINCIDENCE SYSTEM FOR STUDYING COLLISIONAL ION DISSOCIATION - APPLICATION TO H-3(+) IN HE

A simple coincidence circuit has been built and attached to convention al pulse counters to obtain the energy distribution of the coincident ion pair arising from the three-body polar dissociation process H-3(+) +He-->H++H++H-. The coincidence circuit is based on TTL components and a solid-state delay line. A method to derive the true coincidence H+- H- energy distribution is described, from which properties such as the inelastic energy loss and angle of proton ejection can be obtained.