Gamma Detectors: Eyes and Ears of Nuclei

To discern any information about the nucleus, usually nuclear reactions are performed which leaves the residues in excited states. The excited nucleus decays by a series of gamma rays which can be used to infer information about the nucleus. Gamma detectors are thus the eyes and ears through which we can learn about nuclear properties. Before putting the detector to use, it is important to test the characteristics and performance of the detector. These characteristics include its energy resolution and efficiency. The energy resolution of a detector is a measurement of the full width at half max (FWHM), having a smaller FWHM implies better energy resolution for a detector. The efficiency details the ratio of how many signals were received in the detector to how many signals we can get. For gamma detectors the efficiency is energy dependent. High purity Germanium detectors (HpGe) are the choice for gamma ray spectroscopy due to their excellent resolution. Characterization of clover type HpGe and BeGe detectors which are part of the CLARION2 setup at Florida State University will be presented.