Comparison of model fitting and gated integration for pulse shape discrimination and spectral estimation of digitized lanthanum halide scintillator pulses

An analysis of digitized pulse waveforms from experiments with LaBr3(Ce) and LaCl3(Ce) detectors is presented. Pulse waveforms from both scintillator types were captured in the presence of 22Na and 60Co sources and also background alone. Two methods to extract pulse shape discrimination (PSD) parameters and estimate energy spectra were compared. The first involved least squares fitting of the pulse waveforms to a physics-based model of one or two exponentially modified Gaussian functions. The second was the conventional gated integration method. The model fitting method produced better PSD than gated integration for LaCl3(Ce) and higher resolution energy spectra for both scintillator types. A disadvantage to the model fitting approach is that it is more computationally complex and about 5 times slower. LaBr3(Ce) waveforms had a single decay component and showed no ability for alpha/electron PSD. LaCl3(Ce) was observed to have short and long decay components and alpha/electron discrimination was observed.