Performance considerations for γ-ray tracking detectors

The newly developed Ge detector segmentation technology together with state-of-the-art digital signal processing allow to define the locations of γ-ray interaction points as well as the deposited energies in these points. Using this information, it is possible to reconstruct the paths of γ-rays that are fully absorbed by a Ge detector array. The sum of the deposited energies of the interaction points along a track gives the initial energy of the γ-ray, whereas the kinematics of the scattering process provides information about its initial direction. At present a few γ-ray tracking algorithms are under development. In this work, reconstruction results obtained with the backtracking algorithm are presented. The effect of an energy dependence of the position uncertainty on the reconstruction results is shown. An attempt to recover single photointeraction events is also presented. The influence of the atomic-electron momentum on the reconstruction performance in the backtracking and clusterisation algorithms is furthermore discussed.