Electronic Anticoincidence

Electronic anticoincidence is a method (and its associated hardware) widely used to suppress unwanted, "background" events in high energy physics, experimental particle physics, gamma-ray spectroscopy, gamma-ray astronomy, experimental nuclear physics, and related fields. In the typical case, a high-energy interaction, or event, that it is desired to study occurs and is detected by some kind of electronic detector, creating a fast electronic pulse in the associated nuclear electronics. But the desired events are mixed up with a significant number of other events, produced by other particles or other processes, which create indistinguishable events in the detector. Very often it is possible to arrange other physical photon or particle detectors to intercept the unwanted background events, producing essentially simultaneous pulses that can be used with fast electronics to reject, or veto, the unwanted background.