Electronics spikes in GEM data

At times there have been spikes in some of the spectra from GEM due to minor faults in the detector electronics. These spikes may be distinguished from other effects (e.g. Bragg peaks) because, when viewed on a time-of-flight axis, they are one channel wide. Virtually all other phenomena lead to peaks which are more than one channel wide.

If there are spikes in your data then they should be dealt with before running NORM.

If you suspect that there may be electronics spikes in the data stored in a .RAW file then the program FINDSPIKE may be used to search for them, and to create a mask file to exclude the affected spectra. 

There is a new improved way of dealing with spikes, in which they are removed from the .RAW file - click here for details: KILLRAWSPIKE.

Last updated on 20 May 2003 by Alex Hannon (a.c.hannon@rl.ac.uk)