β-particle energy-summing correction for β-delayed proton emission measurements

A common approach to studying beta-delayed proton emission is to measure the energy of the emitted proton and corresponding nuclear recoil in a double-sided silicon-strip detector (DSSD) after implanting the beta-delayed proton-emitting (beta p) nucleus. However, in order to extract the proton-decay energy, the measured energy must be corrected for the additional energy implanted in the DSSD by the beta-particle emitted from the beta p nucleus, an effect referred to here as beta-summing. We present an approach to determine an accurate correction for beta-summing. Our method relies on the determination of the mean implantation depth of the beta p nucleus within the DSSD by analyzing the shape of the total (proton + recoil + beta) decay energy distribution shape. We validate this approach with other mean implantation depth measurement techniques that take advantage of energy deposition within DSSDs upstream and downstream of the implantation DSSD.