Positron Annihilation Lifetime Spectroscopy (PALS) Report

During the previous reporting period much progress has been made developing the PALS research
project. Graduate student Brian Wieland has been constructing, testing, and optimizing the
experimental setup in preparation for two upcoming programs: The first involves validating the
experimental apparatus' ability to accurately reproduce measurements of well-known positron lifetimes
in high-purity samples using a radioactive 22Na source. The second is a feasibility study of the
Accelerator-based Gamma-induced Positron Annihilation Spectroscopy (AG-PAS) technique to
perform the same lifetime measurements using a 2MeV Van de Graaf accelerator. These studies will
pave the way for future work using PALS as a nondestructive method for assessing volume defect
densities in high-Z materials.

The experimental apparatus consists of a radioactive source or accelerator, a material sample,

two PMTs, and readout electronics designed to measure the time difference between two nearly
coincident signals. These signals are referred to as “Start” and “Stop” signals--one of which results
from a decay quanta from an excited nuclear state, while the other results from a 511 keV decay
photon from a positron annihilation event within the sample. For this application, the PMT's as well as
the timing circuit of the electronics must have excellent (fast) timing characteristics. Our current setup
consists of two Photonis XP2020Q PMTs coupled to either fast plastic (BC-418) or BaF2 scintillators.
The PMTs have two signal outputs—the anode and dynode. For the timing circuit, the anode signal is
passed to an Ortec 584 Constant Fraction Discriminator (CFD) which produces a fast NIM logic pulse,
using the constant fraction time derivation technique, for integrated signal sizes beyond a user selected
threshold. These logic pulses are passed to an Ortec 567 TAC gated by an Ortec 414A Fast
Coincidence module. The TAC converts the time difference (t) between the Start and Stop signal
into a voltage which is digitized by a FAST ComTec 7070 ADC. This arrangement is shown in figure
1. To facilitate an offline correction of background event contamination, the energies of the two PMT
dynode signals are also digitized and associated with their corresponding t value.

Figure 1: PALS electronics setup

 A significant amount of time has been spent understanding the experimental setup and
optimizing its timing resolution. The optimization primarily involved tuning the CFD time-walk and
shaping delay cable length but also involved varying the PMT High Voltage (HV). To perform the
optimization study, the fast plastic scintillators combined with BC-630 optical grease were used along
with a 60Co source--which provided 2 coincident gamma rays with 1.17 and 1.33MeV. During the
study, care had to be taken to achieve a consistent, proper CFD threshold setting for these energies,
and thus the CFD threshold level was calibrated for each HV setting. The CFD delay cable length
(lcable) depends on the rise time (trise) of the PMT and the speed of signals in the cable according to the
relation,

l cable =(1.1 t rise −0.8ns)∗0.66 c ,

wherec is the speed of light. The rise time of the PMT signal was measured using a fast oscilloscope
and found to be ~2.5ns. Note that this is ~50% worse than its 1.6ns specification. Using the measured
rise time yields a calculation of lcable = 38.6cm. A range of cable lengths between 20 and 50cm (in
~1cm increments) were constructed and systematically used in the study. Note that for each cable
length tested, the CFD time-walk was checked, and adjusted if necessary, according to the CFD
manual. For a given HV, a minimum in the FWHM of t was observed over a fairly broad range of
cable lengths--between 25 and 40cm—for both PMTs. To summarize, the optimization study yielded
a ~20% improvement in timing resolution, but did not achieve the desired level of 300 to 350ps (or
better) FWHM. A sample distribution of the timing resolution is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Timing resolution distribution. Data is fit with a single

Gaussian peak plus 3rd order polynomial background.

Another important aspect of the experimental setup that requires quantification is the energy
resolution of the detectors as well as their ability to produce the expected energy spectra from various
radioactive sources. Figure 3 displays the energy spectra from a 22Na source for both the fast plastic
and BaF2 detectors. Both distributions show the expected spectra albeit with fairly poor energy
resolution. The BaF2 spectrum clearly shows the two expected photopeaks at 511 and 1275keV, and
the fast plastic spectrum clearly shows the expected Compton edges at 340 and 1068keV. The very
narrow peaks at the low energy end of each spectra are thought to be the single escape peaks since
their location and size are very sensitive to collimation of the source as well as the source/detector
geometry (that is, how far the source is from the scintillator). The energy resolution of the detectors
was determined using BaF2 and a 137Cs source--which produces a single 662keV gamma. Figure 4
shows a typical energy resolution plot for the Start PMT. The Start and Stop PMTs give 27.5% and
35.6% energy resolution respectively. This is far from the expected 7.2% specification and could be
the result of a degraded photocathode and dynodes from extended high rate use at higher than
necessary HV.

Figure 3: Start PMT energy spectra from 22Na. Blue data is from the
fast plastic scintillator. Red data is from the BaF2 scintillator. The total
events in each spectrum are normalized to each other.

Figure 4: Energy Resolution of Start PMT. Data is fit with a double

Gaussian distribution.
 Given the age and extensive use of our PMTs, it is not too surprising that their timing and
energy performance characteristics are less than adequate. For these reasons we have decided to
purchase two new PMTs. Since Photonis no longer manufactures phototubes, we purchased two
Hamamatsu R3377 PMTs which have superior timing and comparable energy characteristics relative
to the XP2020Qs . In preparation for our upcoming PALS measurements, we have also purchased
99.999% pure, cylindrical-bar samples of Pb and Cu and will soon purchase similar samples of Al and
Ti. We have also purchased a new Ortec 583B Constant-fraction Differential Discriminator (CFDD) to
allow us to discriminate our timing signals with both a lower and upper threshold. Once the new
hardware is in hand we will repeat the above studies and proceed with our PALS measurement
programs.