Performance of digital data acquisition system in gamma-ray spectroscopy

A newly developed digital data acquisition system, which is based on the digital pulse processor Pixie-16 modules by XIA LLC, was tested with the γ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\gamma$$\end{document}-ray detector array of the China Institute of Atomic Energy using the γ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\gamma$$\end{document}-ray source and in-beam γ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\gamma$$\end{document}-rays. A comparison between this digital data acquisition system and the conventional analog data acquisition system was made. At a low count rate, both systems exhibit good and comparable energy resolutions. At a high count rate above 8.8 k/s, while the energy resolution obtained by the analog system deteriorates significantly, the energy resolution obtained by the digital system is nearly unchanged. Meanwhile, experimental data with higher statistics can be collected by the digital system. The advantage of this digital system over the conventional analog system can be ascribed to its excellent capability of handling pile-up pulses at higher count rates, and the fact that it has nearly no dead time in data transmission and conversion.