A fundamental limit on timing performance with scintillationdetectors
Clinthorne, N.H.; Petrick, N.A.; Rogers, W.L.; Hero, A.O., III
Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on
Volume 37, Issue 2, Apr 1990 Page(s):658 - 663
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/23.106694
Summary:A new lower bound on the mean-squared error of postdetection
γ-ray time-of-flight estimators has been derived. Previously, the
Cramer-Rao bound has been used, but for nearly exponentially decaying
scintillation pulses it gives an extremely optimistic picture of the
achievable performance, depending critically on the dark current and
photomultiplier characteristics. The new bound has been derived under
the assumption that excited states in the scintillator leading to the
emission of scintillation photons have an exponential lifetime density.
The bound is a function of the mean state lifetime, the spectrum of
energy deposited, and the energy conversion efficiency of the
scintillator, and it is exact for the observation of a
mono-exponentially decaying photoelectron rate at the first dynode of
the photomultiplier tube given the γ-ray arrival time
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