Application of Bayes' theorem for pulse shape discrimination
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-CA), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
A Bayesian approach is proposed for pulse shape discrimination of photons and neutrons in liquid organic scinitillators. Instead of drawing a decision boundary, each pulse is assigned a photon or neutron confidence probability. This allows for photon and neutron classification on an event-by-event basis. The sum of those confidence probabilities is used to estimate the number of photon and neutron instances in the data. An iterative scheme, similar to an expectation-maximization algorithm for Gaussian mixtures, is used to infer the ratio of photons-to-neutrons in each measurement. Therefore, the probability space adapts to data with varying photon-to-neutron ratios. A time-correlated measurement of Am–Be and separate measurements of 137Cs, 60Co and 232Th photon sources were used to construct libraries of neutrons and photons. These libraries were then used to produce synthetic data sets with varying ratios of photons-to-neutrons. Probability weighted method that we implemented was found to maintain neutron acceptance rate of up to 90% up to photon-to-neutron ratio of 2000, and performed 9% better than the decision boundary approach. Furthermore, the iterative approach appropriately changed the probability space with an increasing number of photons which kept the neutron population estimate from unrealistically increasing.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-CA), Livermore, CA (United States); Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation; USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Office of Nonproliferation and Verification Research and Development (NA-22)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC04-94AL85000; NA0002534
- OSTI ID:
- 1235311
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1365791; OSTI ID: 1422673
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-2015-1190J; 567086
- Journal Information:
- Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research. Section A, Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 795, Issue C; ISSN 0168-9002
- Publisher:
- ElsevierCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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