Deadtime reduction in thermal neutron coincidence counter

Abstract Two areas for reducing coincidence deadtime have been investigated, analog and digital. The analog work includes use of a commercially available hybrid preamplifier discriminator useful to at least 150 kpps/channel with present detectors and added circuitry for combining multiple channels. The digital work includes reducing OR gate deadtime and the introduction of a derandomizing buffer at the input of the shift-register section, providing benefits to 1 Mpps. The combined efforts of this work have reduced the six-channel coincidence deadtime from ∼ 2.4 to ∼ 0.7 μs.