Counting errors in a real-time multichannel scaler

In this article the problem of errors arising from a specific design of a real-time multichannel scaler is presented. The dead-times error, double-pulse error, and the error due to the gate width modulation are discussed. The absolute values of the systematic errors of the gate widths of a single channel are of the order of hundreds of picoseconds, making for a severe problem when the gate is small. The problem is overcome by a floating allocation of the gates. This method leads to a decrease in the differences between the variances of the number of counts for all time channels and as a consequence improves the precision of the measurements. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.