The physics of radiation detection has barely changed in a generation - yet the instruments built on it have been transformed.
Silicon photomultipliers have displaced vacuum tubes, new scintillator crystals reach resolutions once out of reach, room-temperature semiconductor detectors are now routine, a global helium-3 shortage reshaped neutron detection, and signal processing has become almost entirely digital. Anyone who learned from older references faces a widening gap between the classic foundations and the equipment actually in use - with no single, rigorous, current account that connects the two.
This comprehensive guide closes that gap. It keeps the durable physics - energy loss in matter, the statistics of counting, and the operating principles of every major detector - and rebuilds the modern technology around it, developing each result from first principles and showing the full working of every derivation and worked example.
Inside, you will:
- Understand how gas-filled, scintillation, and semiconductor detectors work, from charge creation to final spectrum
- Compare detector families by energy resolution, efficiency, timing, and dead time
- Explore modern photodetection, including silicon photomultipliers and imaging arrays
- Separate neutrons from gamma rays and follow neutron detection beyond the helium-3 shortage
- Work through the digital signal chain, from preamplifiers and pulse shaping to data acquisition
- Reduce background with shielding and low-level counting, and connect each method to nuclear, medical-imaging, and security work
Key topics include radiation sources and radiological units; the interaction of radiation with matter; counting statistics; ionization, proportional, and Geiger-Müller counters; scintillation materials and photodetectors; gamma-ray spectroscopy; silicon, germanium, and compound-semiconductor detectors; slow and fast neutron detection; digital pulse processing and data acquisition; background and shielding; and emerging detector technologies.
It is written for upper-level undergraduate and beginning graduate students, and for practicing engineers and scientists who need a current, rigorous, and dependable account of the instruments they rely on.
Open the book and begin building the clear, first-principles understanding of the detectors and measurement systems that define modern radiation detection - a guide to learn from now and keep within reach for years.
Angielski
