Angular insensitivity of a gamma spectrometer for in-field applications

Abstract

In-field measurements have particular challenges as compared with those conducted under laboratory conditions. Besides unknown source shielding, the source-detector distance varies and the detector orientation relative to the incident radiation is not necessarily constant. The incoming flux facing a detector is a parallel beam at long source-detector distances (>1 m). The counting efficiency depends on the tilting angle relative to the beam facing the detector. In principle, a cylindrical detector with a height-diameter ratio of π/4 (H/D = 0.785) exhibits the lowest angular dependency (41% at low energies for a tilting angle of 45° as compared with the orientation of the detector end cap relative to the beam). However, Monte Carlo simulations of a germanium detector showed that this variability can be greatly improved by slightly increasing H/D (0.84) and introducing a copper cladding around the detector (1.1 mm). The counting efficiency of such a detector is almost independent of the direction of photons arriving to the detector. The maximum deviation of 10% takes place at 200 keV.

Keywords: Angular dependency; Efficiency; Field measurements; Gamma spectrometry; Monte Carlo.