Discrete Wavelet Transform Method for High Flux $n-\gamma $ Discrimination With Liquid Scintillators

A Novel method based on discrete wavelet transform (DWT) for n-γ discrimination in high radiation flux is presented. We investigated the behavior of higher order wavelets from different families such as the Daubechies family, symlets, and coiflet type wavelets for pulse shape discrimination. A DWT-based average pulse analysis of neutron and γ-ray pulses suggests less sensitivity of db2, db3, sym4, and coif1 wavelets over the widely used Haar wavelet and the charge comparison method for the pile-up events. The DWT method with proposed wavelets is applied to a mixed radiation field at an energy threshold of 500 keVee obtained from an americium-beryllium source exposed to BC501 liquid scintillator which was coupled to a 12-b digital oscilloscope with sampling rate of 2.5 GSamples/s. The proposed wavelets require a short processing gate and are more suitable when applied to high count rate measurement with large fraction of pile-up events in the data set. Furthermore, these wavelets are very stable toward the variation in the width of processing gate in DWT. This feature is very helpful in the optimization of processing gate for the real-time applications.