Elemental Discrimination of Low-Energy Ions using Risetime Analysis of Silicon-Strip Detector Signals

To make measurements with the intense (but often contaminated) radioactive beams available today, one often needs to identify the reaction products to determine the events of interest. The low energies required for many astrophysics measurements make impossible the use of traditional energy loss techniques, and additional constraints are required. We demonstrate a simple technique to measure the risetimes of silicon strip-detector signals and show partial discrimination can be obtained even at energies below 1 MeV/u.