Speaker
Description
The silicon sensors known as Low Gain Avalanche Diodes, or LGADs, are widely considered for fast-timing applications, especially in high energy and nuclear physics, thanks to an intrinsic gain that allows the production of a controlled avalanche of carriers, with multiplication on the order of 2-100. This technology can provide time resolution of about 20-30 ps, and some of its variants can provide precision tracking too at the 10-micron level, for example AC-coupled LGADs (AC-LGADs). The LGAD technology will be used for timing detectors in several experiments, including the Electron Ion Collider (EIC) for 4D detectors, medical physics, among others.
A robust R&D is on-going to make LGAD faster, i.e. <20 ps time resolution per hit, more reliable under different experimental conditions, including high radiation and extreme temperatures and humidity environments, as well as to understand their performance in detecting highly ionizing particles. Innovative machine learning techniques have also being studied to improve the performance of such devices using the pulse shape characteristics. Read-out electronics are being developed to read LGADs with low jitter and precision spacial resolution for pixel and strip sensors. This presentation will review the status of such R&D on the LGAD technology carried out at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), within the DRD3 Collaboration at CERN.