Half lives of the levels 829 and 864 keV in ¹¹⁵In measured by delayed coincidence technique and analysed by three different methods

Abstract

An initial study of the delayed coincidence technique and methods of analysis has been made. Three methods of analysis are attempted: the slope, the method of moments and the "unfolding" method.

Necessary corrections to minimize errors of calculation are proposed and numerical checks of the methods are performed.

Half lives of the levels 829 and 864 keV in ¹¹⁵In were separately measured by means of β-γ delayed coincidence technique. A Ge (Li) detector of 4cc active volume, in conjunction with a constant fraction timing discriminator, was used to detect the γ- branch.

The data from this experiment were analysed by the above mentioned methods and the proposed corrections were made. Good correspondence was obtained between the unfolding and the method of moments, while the valµe obtained using the slope method was slightly higher. The numerical test of the analysis methods could not explain this difference completely. It was assumed that the difference was due to fluctuations in the collected data.