Low background gamma spectrometry employing HPGe detectors is a sensitive technique for measuring low-level radioactivity in environmental applications, material screening, and for rare decay searches. This work presents spectroscopic performance evaluation and modelling of a low background measurement setup developed at IIT Ropar in Punjab, India, to measure trace natural radioactive elements, with a particular interest in studying low-level radioactivity in soil and/or rock samples to generate specific inputs for low background experiments. The performance test and characterization of a low background cryocooled HPGe detector with relative efficiency of ∼33% have been carried out. An effective detector model has been developed using GEANT4 Monte Carlo simulation to determine the response of the detector over an energy range of 80.9-1408 keV and compared with the experimental performance of the detector. The response of the detector obtained using Monte Carlo simulations agrees reasonably well within 93% level of confidence, indicating only 7% deviation in the comparison. The present setup offers improved detection limits of primordial radionuclides (U/Th and K) to measure radioactive contamination in environmental matrices, which has been used elsewhere [1].
@article{arxiv.2308.11725,
title = {Spectroscopic performance evaluation and modeling of a low background HPGe detector using GEANT4},
author = {Swati Thakur and Soni Devi and Sanjeet S. Kaintura and Katyayni Tiwari and Pushpendra P. Singh},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.11725},
year = {2023}
}