Particle Energy Spectrum, Revisited from a Counting Statistics Perspective

• Activity Number: 505
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 1, 2012 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Physical and Engineering Sciences
• Author(s): Ding Yuan*+ and Daniel G. Marks and Paul Guss
• Companies: NSTec LAO and NSTec LAO and NSTec RSL
• Keywords: gamma spectrum ; energy correlation ; cross section covariance ; joint statistics

Abstract

Gamma, neutron, and other particle radiations are essentially measured through a counting process. When the energies of the particles are ignored, the total counts of the particles usually follow a time-dependent Poisson distribution. When energies of the particles are of concern, energy spectral counting techniques are employed. However, the distributions of the counts of the energy-specific radiation particles have not been seriously studied in the scientific community. Further, the variance, covariance, correlation, and other joint statistics between particle counts having different energies on the same spectrum, have not been seriously investigated either. The current cross section covariance method employed by the nuclear science community and energy industries is essentially 'non-statistical'. In this paper, we will investigate the particle energy spectrum from a joint counting statistics perspective and present a covariance estimation method based on joint counting statistics.

This work was done by National Security Technologies, LLC, under Contract No. DE AC52 06NA25946 with the U.S. Department of Energy.