Spectroscopic technique for optimal P-Z setting in γ-ray detection

A spectroscopic technique for optimally setting the pole-zero (P-Z) compensation in a digital spectrometer has been implemented, which has substantially improved the resolution of the measurements at high count rates. Before ADC conversion the signal undergoes an analog preprocessing, consisting of pole-zero compensation and simple three-pole shaping, which is the proper antialiasing-filter shape in this context. A subsequent suitable digital filter optimizes the overall weight function and introduces digital baseline restoration. It is well known that an imperfect P-Z setting causes pulse-tail pileup which is seen as an additional noise and may impact significantly on the final resolution of the measurements, particularly at high count rates