Speaker
Mr
Thomas Conneely
(University of Leicester and Photek LTD)
Description
The requirements of high energy, high luminosity particle accelerators, particularly the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, has driven the development of a range of Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) able to cope with extremely high event rates and data throughput, while maintaining picosecond timing resolution in the region of 10-100 ps incorporated in a high channel density design. The University of Leicester and Photek Ltd. have been collaborating on using two of these CERN developed ASICs, the NINO amplifier/discriminator and High Performance Time to Digital Convertor (HPTDC), for readout of multi-channel and imaging MCP detectors.
We present results from a photon-counting microchannel plate (MCP) imaging detector using the Capacitive Division Image Readout (C-DIR), designed to provide moderate position resolution (of the order of 100x100 pixel^2), with timing resolution of the order 25 ps and a maximum event rate of 10 MHz, limited by microchannel plate count rate saturation. The NINO and HPTDC combination simultaneously provide picosecond event timing and time-over-threshold determination of charge amplitude required for position determination by the centroiding C-DIR readout. Measurements of the detector's performance will be presented, with a discussion of our experience with utilising ASICs designed for high energy physics for alternative applications.
Preferred medium (Oral/poster)
Oral
Primary authors
Dr
Jon Lapington
(University of Leicester)
Mr
Thomas Conneely
(University of Leicester and Photek LTD)