The empirical characterization of organic liquid scintillation detectors by the normalized average of digitized pulse shapes

The application of the digital acquisition of pulses from a liquid scintillator to detector characterization is described. Experimental data for a mixed neutron/γγ-ray field have been recorded digitally.An empirical method for the characterization of liquid scintillation detectors, in terms of their pulse shape, has been developed which is quick and easy. It provides generic pulses shapes for use in pulse-shape discrimination and that can be used to derive analytical descriptions of each pulse via an accepted six-parameter formulism. The distributions of the neutron and γγ-ray components arising as a result of discrimination via pulse gradient analysis (PGA) follow a bi-Gaussian trend and exhibit degrees of both kurtosis and skew.