Improved energy resolution of highly segmented HPGe detectors by noise reduction

Built-in redundancies in highly segmented high-purity Ge detectors are exploited to increase the energy resolution of these semiconductor devices for detection of electromagnetic radiation in the X-ray and γ-ray regime. The information of the two electronically decoupled independent measurements, the cathode and the anode electrodes, provides an improved signal-to-noise ratio through a combination of the individually measured signals performed on an event-by-event basis. The average energy resolution values of the AGATA triple cluster detector for an energy deposition of 60 keV was measured to be 1.1 keV (FWHM) for the 36 segments and 1.2 keV for the core. The averaged signals of the core and the segments show an improved resolution value of 0.87 keV which is close to the expected theoretical limit. At higher γ-ray energy the averaging technique allows for an enhanced energy resolution with a FWHM of 2.15 keV at 1.3 MeV. By means of the position sensitive operation of AGATA a new value for the Fano factor was determined and the noise contributions to the FWHM of a γ-ray peak separated. © Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2013.