Automatic compensation of dead time effects

Abstract A method was proposed and demonstrated for an automatic compensation of dead time effects, where pseudo pulses whose number are equivalent to the counting losses due to dead time are generated as accidental coincidence counts by a gating method, and inserted into the observed pulse train after delay. In the present work, two gate circuits were used in order to make a 2nd order approximation to the dead time compensation. This method was tested for a NaI(Tl) scintillation detector and a GM counter. Dead time effects were completely compensated up to 200 ks −1 in the case of a NaI(Tl) scintillation detector with a dead time of 3  μ s. Even for the case of the GM counter with an extended dead time of 250  μ s, this method is still useful up to 1 ks −1 . Since the correction can be achieved at every instant during counting time, this method is applicable even when the count rate changes significantly with time.