Direct Waveform Analysis of Ionization Chamber Signals for the SCI-CASTER Project

A prototype segmented ionization chamber and corresponding waveform analysis algorithm for the segmented conductor ionization chamber for advanced spectroscopy targeting emitters of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\alpha $ </tex-math></inline-formula> radiation (SCI-CASTER) project at the Simon Fraser University Nuclear Science Laboratory is discussed in this work. Provided that a robust method of extracting data from the detector is implemented, segmented ionization chambers allow for the measurement of both the energy and position of ionizing particles utilizing a single relatively inexpensive detector system. The waveform analyzer written for the SCI-CASTER project operates directly on raw digitized charge drift signals and generates a set of seven piecewise functions that completely describe the input waveform. This reduces the storage and computation time needed to extract timings and amplitudes from the data, allowing for rapid and adaptive offline data analysis. The performance of the waveform analyzer is summarized for a set of experiment runs, and measurements of timing, energy, and a demonstration of the positional sensitivity of the prototype detector are given.