Scott Holm

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Photometric Camera

We have constructed a large-format mosaic CCD camera for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The camera consists of two arrays, a photometric array that uses 30 2048 × 2048 SITe/Tektronix CCDs (24 μm pixels) with an effective imaging area of 720 cm2 and an astrometric array that uses 24 400 × 2048 CCDs with the same pixel size, which will allow us to tie bright astrometric standard stars to the objects imaged in the photometric camera. The instrument will be used to carry out photometry essentially simultaneously in five color bands spanning the range accessible to silicon detectors on the ground in the time-delay–and–integrate (TDI) scanning mode. The photometric detectors are arrayed in the focal plane in six columns of five chips each such that two scans cover a filled stripe 25 wide. This paper presents engineering and technical details of the camera.

Calibration of a digital hadron calorimeter with muons

The calibration procedure of a finely granulated digital hadron calorimeter with Resistive Plate Chambers as active elements is described. Results obtained with a stack of nine layers exposed to muons from the Fermilab test beam are presented.The calibration procedure of a finely granulated digital hadron calorimeter with Resistive Plate Chambers as the active elements is described. Results obtained with a stack of nine layers exposed to muons from the Fermilab test beam are presented.

Fully 3-D Integrated Pixel Detectors for X-Rays

The vertically integrated photon imaging chip (VIPIC1) pixel detector is a stack consisting of a 500-μm-thick silicon sensor, a two-tier 34-μm-thick integrated circuit, and a host printed circuit board (PCB). The integrated circuit tiers were bonded using the direct bonding technology with copper, and each tier features 1-μm-diameter throughsilicon vias that were used for connections to the sensor on one side, and to the host PCB on the other side. The 80-μm-pixel-pitch sensor was the direct bonding technology with nickel bonded to the integrated circuit. The stack was mounted on the board using Sn-Pb balls placed on a 320-μm pitch, yielding an entirely wire-bond-less structure. The analog front-end features a pulse response peaking at below 250 ns, and the power consumption per pixel is 25 μW. A successful completion of the 3-D integration is reported. In addition, all pixels in the matrix of 64 x 64 pixels were responding on well-bonded devices. Correct operation of the sparsified readout, allowing a single 153-ns bunch timing resolution, was confirmed in the tests on a synchrotron beam of 10-keV X-rays. An equivalent noise charge of 36.2 e- rms and a conversion gain of 69.5 μV/e with 2.6 e- rms and 2.7 μV/e rms pixel-to-pixel variations, respectively, were measured.

Production and commissioning of a large prototype Digital Hadron Calorimeter for future colliding beam experiments

A new detector technology is being developed for future colliding beam experiments that is based on the use of fine-grained calorimetry, to optimize the use of Particle Flow Algorithms (PFAs) in measuring hadronic jets. Instead of traditional tower geometry and energy summation from many sampling layers, the new approach measures energy deposition in 1 cm2 cells on each sampling layer using discriminators. Jets are reconstructed using hit patterns from each layer, combined with information from inner tracking and the electromagnetic calorimeter. We have built a 480,000 channel prototype detector that is based on Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) to demonstrate this concept. The development is part of the CALICE Collaboration. The readout system uses a 64-channel custom integrated circuit called DCAL to record hits from each cell and apply a global timestamp. The chips mount directly on sophisticated front-end boards that are not only an integral part of the charge collection of the detector chambers, but also incorporate digital signal transmission, clock and control, and power and ground. The readout of data is serial, multiplexed into high-speed serial streams and sent to a “back-end” VME system for time-sorting and higher-level triggering. The system can be operated with an external trigger or be self-triggered, and can produce trigger signals from the front-end chips. The construction, installation, and commissioning of this prototype system is now complete. We have begun a measurement program using a test beam at Fermilab. An overview of the system is described. Experiences in building this large prototype system are reported. Results from the test beam are presented.

Monolithic Active Pixel Matrix with Binary Counters ASIC with nested wells

Monolithic Active Matrix with Binary Counters (MAMBO) V ASIC has been designed for detecting and measuring low energy X-rays. A nested well structure with a buried n-well (BNW) and a deeper buried p-well (BPW) is used to electrically isolate the detector from the electronics. BNW acts as an AC ground to electrical signals and behaves as a shield. BPW allows for a homogenous electric field in the entire detector volume. The ASIC consists of a matrix of 50 × 52 pixels, each of 105x105μm2. Each pixel contains analog functionality accomplished by a charge preamplifier, CR-RC2 shaper and a baseline restorer. It also contains a window comparator with Upper and Lower thresholds which can be individually trimmed by 4 bit DACs to remove systematic offsets. The hits are registered by a 12 bit counter which is reconfigured as a shift register to serially output the data from the entire ASIC.

Design, Construction and Commissioning of the Digital Hadron Calorimeter - DHCAL

A novel hadron calorimeter is being developed for future lepton colliding beam detectors. The calorimeter is optimized for the application of Particle Flow Algorithms (PFAs) to the measurement of hadronic jets and features a very finely segmented readout with 1 × 1 cm2 cells. The active media of the calorimeter are Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) with a digital, i.e. one-bit, readout. To first order the energy of incident particles in this calorimeter is reconstructed as being proportional to the number of pads with a signal over a given threshold. A large-scale prototype calorimeter with approximately 500,000 readout channels has been built and underwent extensive testing in the Fermilab and CERN test beams. This paper reports on the design, construction, and commissioning of this prototype calorimeter.