Abstract
The principal component analysis (PCA) method has been employed for the pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) of background alpha-decay self-activity in cerium-doped Lanthanum Bromide (LaBr3:Ce) scintillation detectors. The details of the PSD method are presented, and the performance of the method is experimentally examined against the previously reported peak-to-charge ratio method. The two methods were evaluated by calculating a figure-of-merit (FOM), indicating a FOM value of 0.92 +/- 0.12 for the PCA method against a FOM=0.73 +/- 0.08 for the peak-to-charge ratio method.