Program for the analysis of pulse height spectra and the background from a proportional detector

A PC-Fortran program is presented for fitting of lineshapes and the analysis of pulse height spectra obtainable with proportional detectors. The common fitting and analysis of pulse height spectra by means of mixed Gaussian lineshapes is readily improved by using Voigt lineshapes. In addition, the background can be evaluated during the fitting process without the need of extra measurements. As an application of the program, a pulse height transmission spectrum accumulated with a static⁵⁷Co source and detected with an argon-metane proportional detector, was least squares fitted to an elaborated complex trial lineshape function containing two Voigt lines plus a straight line. The fitting straight line parametersa andb characterize quantitatively the background. The very good PC-fitting obtained shows that the fitting of experimental spectra with the more realistic Voigt lineshapes is no longer a formidable task and that it is possible to evaluate and subtract the background inherent to the experiment during the fitting process.