A Software Suite for Filter Stack Spectrometer Design and Analysis

The filter stack spectrometer (FSS) is a compact, configurable, and easily deployable instrument that can measure x-rays in the MeV range. In this poster, we present a software suite for 1) characterizing FSS designs and 2) unfolding spectra from raw FSS data. Unfolding spectra from filter-stack spectrometers requires a detailed response matrix—the average energy deposited in each image plate or scintillator per incident photon at a certain energy. We provide scripts and analysis tools that automate the creation of a response matrix using the particle transport code MCNP. We additionally provide software that, given a response matrix and raw FSS data, performs the unfold using a new perturbative minimization algorithm and produces a spectrum.