Alpha-Particle Spectrometry Working Group

S. Pommé
stefaan.pomme@ec.europa.eu
European Commission, Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC), Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements (IRMM), Retieseweg 111, B-2440 Geel, Belgium

Within the last years, the development of new techniques for the fabrication of Si detectors and the design of new measurement chambers, has produced considerable advances in the field of alpha-particle spectrometry with semiconductor detectors. Peak resolutions are now close to 8.5 keV, approaching the theoretical limit attainable with this kind of detectors. From the side of numerical analysis of spectra, a major effort has been dedicated by several laboratories to produce reliable fitting programs. Although it is difficult to give a comprehensive listing of activities, the following items describe the main areas of research.

• Development of new measurement techniques
• Improvement of fitting programs
• Measurement of nuclear data with emphasis on alpha-particle emission probabilities
• Computer simulation of the physical processes in the detector and source