Some remarks on dead-time losses of coincidences

Dead-time effects for coincident pulses are known to be a very difficult subject. Apart from some trivial cases, no rigorous results are yet known. For all practical applications, approximate solutions are used, the quality of which is difficult to judge. Whereas in general they seem to be sufficiently reliable, their deficiency begins to show up clearly for very high count rates. Unfortunately, the present small note will not really improve this situation. It may, however, provide some guideline for the credibility of the various approaches which have been suggested