High-Performance 14C Gas-Proportional Counting System Applying Pulse-Shape Discrimination
- 1 January 1992
- journal article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Radiocarbon
- Vol. 34 (3) , 414-419
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0033822200063621
Abstract
The new 14C dating system of the Geological Survey of Finland consists of three CO2 proportional counters of conventional size, a liquid scintillation anticoincidence guard, and a passive shield of about 90-year-old iron. The counting room is an air-conditioned Faraday cage constructed of concrete with aggregate of crystalline Precambrian limestone. We apply pulse-shape discrimination that greatly improves the precision of our 14C analyses - the reduction of background is over 70%, while the modern count rate is reduced only by 15 to 20%. The purity of the counting gas is monitored by recording the cosmic muon pulse-height spectrum. At present, the dating limit for a two-day measurement is 57 ka. We summarize here the most significant results and aspects of pulse-shape discriminationKeywords
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