Real time pulse shape analysis for the /spl Upsi/-interactions in AGATA

AGATA is presently one of the world main detector projects for nuclear physics. It is the first real 4pi gamma-ray spectrometer and consists of segmented Germanium detectors. It is based on the novel technique of pulse shape analysis allowing for the tracking of the gamma-rays inside the detector. Thanks to the resulting determination of the gamma emission direction, the effective granularity is expected to be greater than 5 times 10⁴ and the energy resolution better than 0.5% for transitions emitted by nuclei recoiling at velocities as high as c/2. The PSA is presently considered as the bottle neck of the project. It must allow the determination of the 3D hit locations with high accuracy even in the case of multiple interactions in the same segment. This is achieved by considering the net charge signal and the induced image signals of the neighboring segments. In multi hit cases, the algorithm must decompose the signals into their individual components in real time (some ms). A microprocessor farm, whose size depends on the time performance of our algorithm, is dedicated to the PSA