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Detection efficiency calculations using Geant4 for a broad-energy germanium gamma spectrometer

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Abstract

In assistance of radionuclide measurements at Canada’s Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) laboratory, a Geant4 Monte Carlo application has been developed in simulating a broad-energy germanium detector and calculating detection efficiencies. The detector model was optimized in a reliable and non-biased manner through simultaneous tuning on gap distance and detector dimension, and was validated over various realistic measurement scenarios. All work is based on a series of experiments which covers the typical energy range of gamma radiation in environmental analysis, and considers the variety of the CTBT sample type, dimension and distance-to-detector. In all cases, the predicted efficiencies are consistent with the empirical ones within 5%, with a typical deviation of 3% in majority.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Radiation Protection Bureau of Health Canada, 775 Brookfield Road, Ottawa, ON, K1A 1C1, Canada

    Chuanlei Liu, Kurt Ungar, Ian Hoffman & Weihua Zhang

  2. Royal Military College of Canada, 13 General Crear Crescent, Kingston, ON, K7K 7B4, Canada

    Dylan Pierce

Authors
  1. Chuanlei Liu
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  2. Kurt Ungar
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  3. Dylan Pierce
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  4. Ian Hoffman
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  5. Weihua Zhang
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Correspondence to Chuanlei Liu.

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Liu, C., Ungar, K., Pierce, D. et al. Detection efficiency calculations using Geant4 for a broad-energy germanium gamma spectrometer. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 312, 471–478 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-017-5239-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-017-5239-5

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