Nuclear Electronics

The course aims to provide students with knowledge and understanding of the electronic noise and its propagation through time-invariant/time-variant linear circuits, as well as with the ability to optimize the signal-to-noise ratio in presence of non-white noises. The optimization of a high-resolution nuclear-radiation spectrometer will be studied in detail as a case study.

At the end of the course, students will be able to
1. Discuss the physical mechanisms related to electronic-noise generation
2. Describe the spectral power density of noise and calculate the signal-to-noise ratio
3. Propagate the electronic noise through linear circuits and calculate the input-referred noise density
4. Discuss the weight-function and optimal filtering-concepts
5. Describe in detail the functional blocks of an electronic chain for ionizing-radiation spectroscopy
6. Discuss the working principle and the properties of a charge-sensitive preamplifier
7. Derive the current signals seen at the electrodes of radiation detectors
8. Discuss the techniques for the optimization of a nuclear spectrometer at physical and processing level