This paper was presented by invitation at the Radiological and Nuclear Detection Symposium on 26 March 2014. It was developed to combat the persistent problem of underestimating the role of energy resolution when developing spectroscopic detectors for the identification of radionuclear isotopes. This issue is particular acute in efforts to develop detectors for use in the worldwide struggle against the threat of nuclear terrorism. The role of energy resolution in detector sensitivity is generally understood, but its role in isotope identification is regularly misunderstood. One reason for this is the lack of easily understood metrics to quantify this role. This paper develops an easy to use metric to fill this need.

Energy Resolution Metric