Pulse-Height Analyzer

pulse-height analyzer [′pəls ‚hīt ′an·ə‚līz·ər]

(nucleonics)

An instrument capable of indicating the number of occurrences of pulses falling within each of one or more specified amplitude ranges; used to obtain the energy spectrum of nuclear radiations. Also known as kick-sorter (British usage); multichannel analyzer.

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Pulse-Height Analyzer 

a device for determining the distribution law for the amplitude of electrical pulses. It is commonly used to analyze the amplitude distribution of a random pulse process according to the number of pulses occurring in a specified amplitude range. Pulse-height analyzers are used extensively in experimental physics to analyze the particle energy distribution of various types of radiation and to investigate continuous stable random processes by isolating discrete values of the amplitude in the random process in the form of a sequence of pulses and in radar and radio communication to analyze signals of complicated shape. The simplest pulse-height analyzer includes two amplitude discriminators and an anticoincidence circuit that transmits to the output those signals with amplitudes falling within the range of levels of the discriminator (the channel width). A spectrum is analyzed by a series of measurements while maintaining a constant channel width but different absolute values of discriminator levels. There are many different pulse-height analyzer systems varying in range, number of values measured simultaneously, accuracy, and presence of an output recorder: multichannel pulse-height analyzers with electronic switching, spectrographs with a gray wedge, those having a preliminary conversion of the signal amplitude into a time variable, and others.