 Detection-threshold selection bias in pulse-energy means

Detection-threshold selection bias in pulse-energy means occurs when detected pulses have a different energy distribution from all emitted pulses. A detector conditions the reported mean on detection, not merely on emission. Let $U$ be emitted-pulse energy with finite mean and let $s(u)=\mathrm{Pr}(D\mid U=u,E)$ be detection probability conditional on emission $E$. ThenThe denominator must be positive. An ideal energy threshold has $s(u)=1$ above threshold and zero below. Its nondecreasing selection preferentially retains stronger pulses; false triggers or selection on another variable require a different model.

For an original distribution, emitted energies are $1$, $3$ and $7\mathrm{nJ}$ with probabilities $0.25$, $0.50$ and $0.25$. Their conditional pulse-energy mean given emission is $3.5\mathrm{nJ}$. A perfect receiver accepting only energies above $2\mathrm{nJ}$ detects $75\%$ of emitted pulses and reportsThe detected-event mean is about $23.8\%$ too high for the emitted-pulse mean, even with perfect energy measurements on every accepted event.

A trigger counter, a lower-threshold reference monitor and a threshold sweep can distinguish missing detections from missing emissions. Historical calorimetric inference uses total energy, exposure time and pulse rate; the rate must describe the population whose mean is requested.^[ref] This selection example is an independent probability model, not a reconstruction of that experiment.

Known positive detection probabilities can support inverse probability weighting. A hard threshold with zero probability below it leaves that part of the energy distribution unidentified from detected events alone. Reporting the acceptance fraction as well as the detected-event mean makes the conditioning explicit; it does not recover the unseen weak-pulse energies.