Data acquisition system with pulse height capability for the TOFED time-of-flight neutron spectrometer

A new time-of-flight neutron spectrometer TOFED has been constructed for installation at Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak. A data acquisition system combining measurements of flight time and energy from the interaction of neutrons with the TOFED scintillators has been developed. The data acquisition system can provide a digitizing resolution better than 1.5% (to be compared with the > 10% resolution of the recoil particle energy in the plastic scintillators) and a time resolution < 1 ns. At the same time, it is compatible with high count rate event recording, which is an essential feature to investigate phenomena occurring on time scales faster than the slowing down time (approximate to 100 ms) of the beam ions in the plasma. Implications of these results on the TOFED capability to resolve fast ion signatures in the neutron spectrum from EAST plasmas are discussed. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.