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Performance of digital data acquisition system in gamma-ray spectroscopy

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Abstract

A newly developed digital data acquisition system, which is based on the digital pulse processor Pixie-16 modules by XIA LLC, was tested with the \(\gamma\)-ray detector array of the China Institute of Atomic Energy using the \(\gamma\)-ray source and in-beam \(\gamma\)-rays. A comparison between this digital data acquisition system and the conventional analog data acquisition system was made. At a low count rate, both systems exhibit good and comparable energy resolutions. At a high count rate above 8.8 k/s, while the energy resolution obtained by the analog system deteriorates significantly, the energy resolution obtained by the digital system is nearly unchanged. Meanwhile, experimental data with higher statistics can be collected by the digital system. The advantage of this digital system over the conventional analog system can be ascribed to its excellent capability of handling pile-up pulses at higher count rates, and the fact that it has nearly no dead time in data transmission and conversion.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank X.G. Wu, Y. Zheng, C.B. Li, H. Tan, and W. Hennig for their great help during testing of this DDAQ.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Di-Wen Luo, Hong-Yi Wu, Zhi-Huan Li, Chuan Xu, Hui Hua, Xiang-Qing Li, Xiang Wang, Shuang-Quan Zhang, Zhi-Qiang Chen, Chen-Guang Wu, Yu Jin & Jie Lin

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  1. Di-Wen Luo
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  2. Hong-Yi Wu
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  3. Zhi-Huan Li
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  4. Chuan Xu
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  5. Hui Hua
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  6. Xiang-Qing Li
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  7. Xiang Wang
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  12. Jie Lin
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Di-Wen Luo, Hong-Yi Wu, and Zhi-Huan Li. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Di-Wen Luo and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Zhi-Huan Li or Hui Hua.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFA0404403), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 12035001, 12075006, 11675003), and the State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, PKU (No. NPT2020KFY18).

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Luo, DW., Wu, HY., Li, ZH. et al. Performance of digital data acquisition system in gamma-ray spectroscopy. NUCL SCI TECH 32, 79 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-021-00917-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-021-00917-8

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