Pulser injection with subsequent removal-implementation and applications

The technique of pulser injection with subsequent removal has been developed to provide truly automated gamma-ray spectrometry. The operator is freed from the requirements of pulser-peak positioning and rate adjustment common with standard pulser implementations. Use of the concurrently gathered pulser data to correct for spectral gain and zero shifts, monitor spectrometer performance in real time, compensate for resolution degradation with input rate, and correct for random summation and deadtime effects results in accurate analyses with a minimum of operator intervention. Digital logic in a special pulser control and separation module is used to modify (or not modify) ADC (analog/digital converter) addresses based on pulser-tagging logic signals. The authors describe the implementation, performance testing, and applications of this technique.< >