Application of correlation pattern recognition technique for neutron– gamma discrimination in the EJ-301 liquid scintillation detector

The ability to distinguish between neutrons and gamma-rays is important in the fast -neutron detection, especially when using the scintillation detector. A dual correlation pattern recognition (DCPR) method that was based on the correlation pattern recognition technique has been developed for classification of neutron/gamma events from a scintillation detector. In this study, an EJ-301 liquid scintillation (EJ301) detector was used to detect neutrons and gamma-rays from the 60Co and 252Cf sources; the EJ301 detector's pulses were digitized by a digital oscilloscope and its pulse-shape discriminant (PSD) parameters were calculated by the correlation pattern recognition(CPR) method with the reference neutron and gamma-ray pulses. The digital charge integration (DCI) method was also used as a reference-method for comparison with DCPR method. The figure-ofmerit (FOM) values which were calculated in the 50 ÷ 1100 keV electron equivalent (keVee) region showed that the DCPR method outperformed the DCI method. The FOMs of 50, 420 and 1000 keVee thresholds of DCPR method are 0.82 , 2.2 and 1.62, which are 1.55, 1.77, and 1.1 times greater than the DCI method, respectively.

The efficient neutron-gamma pulse shape discrimination with small active volume scintillation detector

A small detector with EJ-301 liquid scintillation was manufactured for the study on the neutron-gamma pulse shape discrimination. In this research, four algorithms, including Threshold crossing time (TCT), Pulse gradient analysis (PGA), Charge comparison method (CCM), and Correlation pattern recognition (CPR) were developed and compared in terms of their discrimination effectiveness between neutrons and gamma rays. The figures of merits (FOMs) obtained for 100 ÷ 2000 keVee (keV energy electron equivalent) neutron energy range show the charge comparison method was the most efficient of the four algorithms.