C. de la Taille

Petiroc and Citiroc: front-end ASICs for SiPM read-out and ToF applications

Petiroc and Citiroc are the two latest ASIC from Weeroc dedicated to SiPM read-out.Petiroc is a 16-channel front-end ASIC designed to readout silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) for particle time-of-flight measurement applications. It combines a very fast and low-jitter trigger with an accurate charge measurement.Citiroc is a 32-channel front-end ASIC designed to readout silicon photo-multipliers (SiPM). It allows triggering down to 1/3 pe and provides the charge measurement with a good noise rejection. Moreover, Citiroc outputs the 32-channel triggers with a high accuracy (100 ps).Each channel of both ASICs combines a trigger path with an accurate charge measurement path. An adjustment of the SiPM high voltage is possible using a channel-by-channel input DAC. That allows a fine SiPM gain and dark noise adjustment at the system level to correct for the non-uniformity of SiPMs.Timing measurement down to 16 ps RMS jitter for Petiroc and 100 ps RMS for Citiroc is possible along with 1% linearity energy measurement up to 2500 pe. The power consumption is around 3.5 mW/channel for Petiroc and 3 mW/channel for Citiroc, excluding ASICs outing buffer.

The MU-RAY project: detector technology and first data from Mt. Vesuvius

Muon Radiography allows to map the density of a volcanic cone. It is based on the measurement of the attenuation of the flux of muons present in the cosmic radiation on the ground. The MU-RAY project has developed an innovative detector designed for the muon radiography. The main features are the low electric power consumption, robustness and transportability, good spatial resolution and muon time of flight measurement. A 1 m2 detector prototype has been constructed. and collected data at Mt. Vesuvius for approximately 1 month in spring 2013. A second campaign of measurement has been performed at the Puy de Dome, France, in the last four months of 2013. In this article the principles of muon radiography, the MU-RAY detector and the first results from the collected data will be described.

Construction and commissioning of a technological prototype of a high-granularity semi-digital hadronic calorimeter

A large prototype of 1.3m3 was designed and built as a demonstrator of the semi-digital hadronic calorimeter (SDHCAL) concept proposed for the future ILC experiments. The prototype is a sampling hadronic calorimeter of 48 units. Each unit is built of an active layer made of 1m2 Glass Resistive Plate Chamber(GRPC) detector placed inside a cassette whose walls are made of stainless steel. The cassette contains also the electronics used to read out the GRPC detector. The lateral granularity of the active layer is provided by the electronics pick-up pads of 1cm2 each. The cassettes are inserted into a self-supporting mechanical structure built also of stainless steel plates which, with the cassettes walls, play the role of the absorber. The prototype was designed to be very compact and important efforts were made to minimize the number of services cables to optimize the efficiency of the Particle Flow Algorithm techniques to be used in the future ILC experiments. The different components of the SDHCAL prototype were studied individually and strict criteria were applied for the final selection of these components. Basic calibration procedures were performed after the prototype assembling. The prototype is the first of a series of new-generation detectors equipped with a power-pulsing mode intended to reduce the power consumption of this highly granular detector. A dedicated acquisition system was developed to deal with the output of more than 440000 electronics channels in both trigger and triggerless modes. After its completion in 2011, the prototype was commissioned using cosmic rays and particles beams at CERN.

SKIROC2_CMS an ASIC for testing CMS HGCAL

SKIROC2_CMS is a chip derived from CALICE SKIROC2 that provides 64 channels of low noise charge preamplifiers optimized for 50 pF pin diodes and 10 pC dynamic range. They are followed by high gain and low gain 25 ns shapers, a 13-deep 40 MHz analog memory used as a waveform sampler at 40 MHz. and 12-bit ADCs. A fast shaper followed by discriminator and TDC provide timing information to an accuracy of 50 ps, in order to test TOT and TOA techniques at system level and in test-beam. The chip was sent to fabrication in January 2016 in AMS SiGe 0,35 μm and was received in May. It was tested in the lab during the summer and will be mounted on sensors for beam-tests in the fall.

Low energy calorimetry in a multiwire chamber filled with tetramethylsilane

Abstract The energy resolution on electrons from a 207 Bi source is measured in a multiwire chamber filled with the room-temperature liquid tetramethylsilane. The contribution of the ultra-low-noise electronics to the energy resolution is 16 keV (rms). The physical resolution is found to be 36.8 keV (rms) for the 976 keV conversion electron line, with an electric field of 3.5 kVcm −1 . Results on the free electron yield in the liquid are also given.

SiW ECAL for future

Calorimeters with silicon detectors have many unique features and are proposed for several world-leading experiments. We discuss the tests of the first three 18×18 cm2 layers segmented into 1024 pixels of the technological prototype of the silicon-tungsten electromagnetic calorimeter for a future e+e− collider. The tests have beem performed in November 2015 at CERN SPS beam line.

e^+e^-

Abstract The electron lifetime in tetramethylsilane is measured by analyzing the current pulse shape generated by photoelectrons drifting in a parallel plate cell. Electron lifetime values of 189 ± 10 μ s and 8.3 ± 0.3 μ s have been measured in two different samples of liquids.

collider

The ILD Si-W ECAL is a sampling calorimeter with tungsten absorber and highly segmented silicon layers for the International Large Detector (ILD), one of the two detector concepts for the International Linear Collider. SKIROC2 is an ASIC for the ILD Si-W ECAL. To investigate the issues found in prototype detectors, we prepared dedicated ASIC evaluation boards with either BGA sockets or directly soldered SKIROC2. We report a performance study with the evaluation boards, including signal-to-noise ratio and TDC performance with comparing SKIROC2 and an updated version, SKIROC2A.

Purity measurement in tetramethylsilane

The 24th of August 2014, the EUSO-BALLOON instrument went for a night flight for several hours, 40 km above Timmins (Canada) balloon launching site, concretizing the hard work of an important part of the JEM-EUSO collaboration started 3 years before. This instrument consists of a telescope made of two lenses and a complex electronic chain divided in two mains sub-systems: the PDM (photo detector module) and the DP (data processing). Each of them is made of several innovative elements developed and tested in a short time. This paper presents their performances before, during and after the flight.

Performance study of SKIROC2/A ASIC for ILD Si-W ECAL

The ASIC CATIROC (Charge And Time Integrated Read Out Chip) is a complete read-out chip designed to read arrays of 16 photomultipliers (PMTs). It finds a valuable application in the content of the JUNO (Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory) experiment [1], a liquid scintillator antineutrino detector with a double calorimetry system combining about 17k 20″ PMTs (Large PMTs system) and around 25k 3″ PMTs (Small PMTs system). A front-end electronics based on the ASIC CATIROC matches well within the 3″ PMTs system specifications as explained in this paper. CATIROC is a SoC (System on Chip) that processes analog signals up to the digitization to reduce the cost and cables number. The ASIC is composed of 16 independent channels that work in triggerless mode, auto-triggering on the single photo-electron (PE). It provides a charge measurement with a charge resolution of 15 fC and a timing information with a precision of 200 ps rms.