Simulations on time-of-flight ERDA spectrometer performance

Abstract

The performance of a time-of-flight spectrometer consisting of two timing detectors and an ionization chamber energy detector has been studied using Monte Carlo simulations for the recoil creation and ion transport in the sample and detectors. The ionization chamber pulses have been calculated using Shockley-Ramo theorem and the pulse processing of a digitizing data acquisition setup has been modeled. Complete time-of-flight–energy histograms were simulated under realistic experimental conditions. The simulations were used to study instrumentation related effects in coincidence timing and position sensitivity, such as background in time-of-flight–energy histograms. Corresponding measurements were made and simulated results are compared with data collected using the digitizing setup.