Timing of Fast Scintillators using Digitizers

Recently, FPGA based digitizers have found attractive applications in signal processing for complex detector arrays in nuclear physics [1]. In the fast digitizers, a flash ADC directly samples and stores the PMT output of scintillation detectors. Digital Signal Processing (DSP) techniques are used to extract the energy and timing information of the acquired signal. DSP not only reduces requirement of electronics units and cabling, but also eliminates temperature related drifts to a large extent. The jitter and walk introduced by the discriminator in an analog chain can be avoided by using digital timing techniques.