Gating of charge sensitive preamplifiers for the use at pulsed radiation sources.

The development of a switch circuit to gate charge sensitive preamplifiers for use at pulsed radiation sources will be presented.This development was used for the 16O(n,alpha)13C reaction measurement with a Double Frisch Grid Ionization Chamber (DFGIC) at the neutron time-of-flight facility CERN nTOF in Geneva, Switzerland. The so-called gamma-flash, which is produced in the spallation target of the nTOF facility can saturate charge sensitive preamplifiers and prevent signals from being registered in the detection system. The switch circuit made it possible for the first time to perform a measurement with the DFGIC with gamma-flash gated off at nTOF in November 2018. Nano-second gating of charge sensitive preamplifiers has a wide range of applicability at pulsed radiation sources, where short burst of radiation must be gated off to avoid saturation, e.g. with HPGe detectors for gamma-ray detection. Nano-second gating requires the stray-capacitance of the wideband reflective switch to be compensated to avoid a strong signal during the switch operation. Spectral analysis of the switch circuit shows that additional noise is insignificant.