Pulse Shape Discrimination - A Survey of Current Teniques

A feature of scintillation counters is their ability to provide information on the type of exciting particle from the characteristics of the scintillation decay. The current state of knowledge on the decay of organic and inorganic phosphors is reviewed, and the main features of the many circuits devised to utilize the effect are discussed. Limitations to the discrimination technique may be expected at high rates due to pulse pile up. The degrees of discrimination possible to low particle energies appears to be worse than may be expected on the basis of the photoelectron information available. The implications of this are examined.