Reconstruction of a Radiation Source’s Location Using Statistical Test on HPGe Detector Spectra (2010)

Undergraduates: Len Evans, K. Andre, R. De, E.D. Morgan

Faculty Advisor: Reyco Henning
Department: Physics & Astronomy

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High purity germanium (HPGe) detectors are ubiquitous in nuclear physics experiments and are also used in numerous low radioactive background detectors. The effect of the position of 60 Co and 137 Cs point sources on the shape of spectra were studied with Monte Carlo and HPGe detector measurements. We briefly confirm previous work on the position dependence of relative heights of peaks. Spectra taken with the radiation sources placed at locations around the detector were then compared using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) goodness-of-fit test. We demonstrate that

with this method the Compton continuum spectral shape has good sensitivity to the radial location of a point-source, but poor angular resolution. We conclude with a study of the position reconstruction accuracy as a function of the

number of counts from the source.