Efficiency calibration of BEGe and extended range detectors

Area of Science:

• Nuclear Physics
• Spectroscopy
• Detector Calibration

Background:

• Efficiency calibration of High-Purity Germanium (HPGe) detectors is crucial for accurate radioisotope quantification.
• True coincidence summing significantly impacts measurements involving low-energy gamma-rays and X-rays.
• Existing methods often struggle with accurate corrections for these specific energy ranges.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and implement a robust method for efficiency calibration of HPGe detectors, specifically addressing true coincidence summing effects.
• To enhance gamma-ray spectrometry software with advanced correction capabilities for low-energy emissions.
• To validate the new method on sensitive detector systems like BeGe and XtRa.

Main Methods:

• Integration of the EFFTRAN code, upgraded for X-ray emission simulation, into the Genie2K gamma-ray spectrometry software.
• Utilizing EFFTRAN to compute true coincidence summing corrections.
• Performing efficiency calibrations on BeGe and XtRa HPGe detector systems.

Main Results:

• Successful implementation of a novel method for efficiency calibration accounting for true coincidence summing.
• Accurate results obtained for detectors sensitive to X-rays, demonstrating the effectiveness of the upgraded EFFTRAN code.
• Validated efficiency calibration for BeGe and XtRa detectors.

Conclusions:

• The integrated EFFTRAN-Genie2K method provides accurate efficiency calibrations for HPGe detectors, even with low-energy gamma-rays and X-rays.
• The upgraded EFFTRAN code is essential for handling true coincidence summing in X-ray emission simulations.
• This approach enhances the reliability of quantitative analysis in gamma-ray spectrometry.