An advanced pulse stretcher for the acquisition of the "Fast" component of BaF2 detectors signals

A fast gateless pulse stretcher has been developed for an easy acquisition of pulse-shape information of BaF₂ scintillator signals. Commonly, this information is obtained by the use of two QDCs with different integration windows. This technique becomes complex and rather inconvenient when signals need to be delayed. The developed circuit uses a fast-stretcher technique to generate pulse-shape information, which requires no delay lines or gate signals. The outputs consist of two Gaussian signals whose amplitudes are proportional to the height of the BaF₂ fast component and to the total energy deposited into the scintillator. These outputs are easily acquired with a standard peak ADC with no gate-timing problems. An excellent Fast-Slow separation has been obtained even with small input signals of only few millivolts. This technology is general purpose and can be used with any other scintillator whose light emission is characterized by two components with different lifetimes.