Building a multi-cathode gas-filled detector

Detecting and identifying the nuclear radiation or decay yield with high accuracy is still an experimental challenge and has to be optimized for each application. One of the most commonly used instrument is the proportional counter, which measures the energy of incident particles, by producing ionization output proportional to the particle energy. This ionization output allows the discrimination of particles with same charge e.g. positron, protons, alpha or heavier ions. Another widely used instrument is the scintillator detector, which measures the energy of incident particle, also by producing light in the scintillator material, that is collected and multiplied in the output pulse of a photo-multiplier tube PMT. The Multi-Cathode Gas-filled Scintillator MCGS detector we are building gets advantages of the proportional chambers and the scintillator detectors. It identifies the particles by measuring their energy loss E_loss in the proportional chamber due to the collision with the atoms of the filling gas, and the rest energy E_rest of the particles which is measured when the particles are stopped in the scintillator material. A high rate data acquisition system is under development to be used by the detector.