Table of contents

In this work, a new generation of scintillator based X-ray imagers based on ZnO nanowires in Anodized Aluminum Oxide (AAO) nanoporous template is characterized. The optical response of ordered ZnO nanowire arrays in porous AAO template under low energy X-ray illumination is simulated by the Geant4 Monte Carlo code and compared with experimental results. The results show that for 10 keV X-ray photons, by considering the light guiding properties of zinc oxide inside the AAO template and suitable selection of detector thickness and pore diameter, the spatial resolution less than one micrometer and the detector detection efficiency of 66% are accessible. This novel nano scintillator detector can have many advantages for medical applications in the future.

The Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass (CREAM) mission is planned for launch in 2015 to the International Space Station (ISS) to research high-energy cosmic rays. Its aim is to understand the acceleration and propagation mechanism of high-energy cosmic rays by measuring their compositions. The Top Counting Detector and Bottom Counting Detector (T/BCD) were built to discriminate electrons from protons by using the difference in cascade shapes between electromagnetic and hadronic showers. The T/BCD provides a redundant instrument trigger in flight as well as a low-energy calibration trigger for ground testing. Each detector consists of a plastic scintillator and two-dimensional silicon photodiode array with readout electronics. The TCD is located between the carbon target and the calorimeter, and the BCD is located below the calorimeter. In this paper, we present the design, assembly, and performance of the T/BCD.

Presented here are first tests of a Gaseous Photomultiplier based on a cascade of Thick GEM structures intended for gamma-ray position reconstruction in liquid argon. The detector has a MgF₂ window, transparent to VUV light, and a CsI photocathode deposited on the first THGEM . A gain of 8⋅ 10⁵ per photoelectron and ∼ 100% photoelectron collection efficiency are measured at stable operation settings. The excellent position resolution capabilities of the detector (better than 100 μm) at 100 kHz readout rate, is demonstrated at room temperature. Structural integrity tests of the detector and seals are successfully performed at cryogenic temperatures by immersing the detector in liquid Nitrogen, laying a good foundation for future operation tests in noble liquids.

The room-temperature Cross-Bar H-Type Drift-Tube Linac (CH-DTL) is one of the candidate accelerating structures, working at 325 MHz in CW mode, for the Chinese ADS project. In this study the multi-cell cavity geometry has been optimized using the method of "parameter sweeping with constraint variable" which is found superior to parameter sweeping with a single variable. To facilitate manufacture, a spherical drift tube shape is adopted. It can be concluded that a cavity having cylindrical end cups has higher shunt impedance than one with cone-shaped end cups.

In this paper, we report on the design and operation of the LongBo time projection chamber in the Liquid Argon Purity Demonstrator cryostat. This chamber features a 2 m long drift distance. We measure the electron drift lifetime in the liquid argon using cosmic ray muons and the lifetime is at least 14 ms at 95% confidence level. LongBo is equipped with preamplifiers mounted on the detector in the liquid argon. Of the 144 channels, 128 channels were readout by preamplifiers made with discrete circuitry and 16 channels were readout by ASIC preamplifiers. For the discrete channels, we measure a signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio of 30 at a drift field of 350 V/cm. The measured S/N ratio for the ASIC channels was 1.4 times larger than that measured for the discrete channels.

In this paper we studied one of the aspects potentially limiting the single-photon time-resolution (SPTR) of the silicon photomultiplier (SiPM): the transit time spread (TTS). We illuminated the SiPM in different positions with a fast-pulsed laser collimated to a circular spot of 0.2 mm-diameter and acquired bi-dimensional maps of the avalanche-signal arrival time of RGB and RGB-HD SiPMs, produced at FBK.

We studied the effect of both the number of bonding wires connecting the device to the package and the layout of the top-metal connection (on the device). We found that the TTS does not simply depend on the trace length between the cell and the bonding pad and it could vary in the range between tens of picoseconds (with 3 bonding connections) to more than one hundred of picoseconds (with one connection).

Cornell's electron/positron storage ring (CESR) was modified over a series of accelerator shutdowns beginning in May 2008, which substantially improves its capability for research and development for particle accelerators. CESR's energy span from 1.8 to 5.6 GeV with both electrons and positrons makes it ideal for the study of a wide spectrum of accelerator physics issues and instrumentation related to present light sources and future lepton damping rings. Additionally a number of these are also relevant for the beam physics of proton accelerators. This paper, the second in a series of four, discusses the modifications of the vacuum system necessary for the conversion of CESR to the test accelerator, CESR-TA, enhanced to study such subjects as low emittance tuning methods, electron cloud (EC) effects, intra-beam scattering, fast ion instabilities as well as general improvements to beam instrumentation. A separate paper describes the vacuum system modifications of the superconducting wigglers to accommodate the diagnostic instrumentation for the study of EC behavior within wigglers. While the initial studies of CESR-TA focussed on questions related to the International Linear Collider (ILC) damping ring design, CESR-TA is a very flexible storage ring, capable of studying a wide range of accelerator physics and instrumentation questions.

Cornell's electron/positron storage ring (CESR) was modified over a series of accelerator shutdowns beginning in May 2008, which substantially improves its capability for research and development for particle accelerators. CESR's energy span from 1.8 to 5.6 GeV with both electrons and positrons makes it ideal for the study of a wide spectrum of accelerator physics issues and instrumentation related to present light sources and future lepton damping rings. Additionally a number of these are also relevant for the beam physics of proton accelerators. This paper outlines the motivation, design and conversion of CESR to a test accelerator, CESRTA, enhanced to study such subjects as low emittance tuning methods, electron cloud (EC) effects, intra-beam scattering, fast ion instabilities as well as general improvements to beam instrumentation. While the initial studies of CESRTA focussed on questions related to the International Linear Collider (ILC) damping ring design, CESRTA is a very flexible storage ring, capable of studying a wide range of accelerator physics and instrumentation questions. This paper contains the outline and the basis for a set of papers documenting the reconfiguration of the storage ring and the associated instrumentation required for the studies described above. Further details may be found in these papers.

The Hybrid Compact Gamma Camera (HCGC) is a portable optical-gamma hybrid imager designed for intraoperative medical imaging, particularly for sentinel lymph node biopsy procedures. To investigate the capability of the HCGC in lymphatic system imaging, two lymphoscintigraphic phantoms have been designed and constructed. These phantoms allowed quantitative assessment and evaluation of the HCGC for lymphatic vessel (LV) and sentinel lymph node (SLN) detection. Fused optical and gamma images showed good alignment of the two modalities allowing localisation of activity within the LV and the SLN. At an imaging distance of 10 cm, the spatial resolution of the HCGC during the detection process of the simulated LV was not degraded at a separation of more than 1.5 cm (variation <5%) from the injection site (IS). Even in the presence of the IS the targeted LV was detectable with an acquisition time of less than 2 minutes. The HCGC could detect SLNs containing different radioactivity concentrations (ranging between 1:20 to 1:100 SLN to IS activity ratios) and under various scattering thicknesses (ranging between 5 mm to 30 mm) with high contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) values (ranging between 11.6 and 110.8). The HCGC can detect the simulated SLNs at various IS to SLN distances, different IS to SLN activity ratios and through varied scattering medium thicknesses. The HCGC provided an accurate physical localisation of radiopharmaceutical uptake in the simulated SLN. These characteristics of the HCGC reflect its suitability for utilisation in lymphatic vessel drainage imaging and SLN imaging in patients in different critical clinical situations such as interventional and surgical procedures.

Experiments trying to detect 0νββ are very challenging. Their requirements include a good energy resolution and a good detection efficiency. With current fine pixelated CdTe detectors there is a trade off between the energy resolution and the detection efficiency, which limits their performance. It will be shown with simulations that this problem can be mostly negated by analysing the cathode signal which increases the optimal sensor thickness. We will compare different types of fine pixelated CdTe detectors (Timepix, Dosepix, HEXITEC) from this point of view.

Non-equilibrium plasma generated by nanosecond pulsed laser are characterized by solid state 4H-SiC interdigit Schottky diodes and by a large area ion collector detector, both connected in time-of-flight configuration. Plasma generated by irradiation of different metallic targets through a pulsed laser with a 10¹⁰ W/cm² intensity and a 200 mJ energy, where monitored. In this paper we demonstrate that the interdigit 4H-SiC diode is able to detect ultraviolet radiation and soft X-rays, with energy of the order of 20 eV with very short rise time, of a few nanoseconds, and high efficiency, comparable with the performance of traditional large area ion collectors. Thanks to their millimetric size, solid state 4H-SiC detectors are good candidates for the fabrication of array systems for the spatial distribution measurement of plasma radiation. Moreover, owing to the their high efficiency and the interdigit geometry of front electrode, 4H-SiC diodes here proposed are suitable also for low energy ions detection.

In non-destructive evaluation with X-rays light elements embedded in dense, heavy (or high-Z) matrices show little contrast and their structural details can hardly be revealed. Neutron radiography, on the other hand, provides a solution for those cases, in particular for hydrogenous materials, owing to the large neutron scattering cross section of hydrogen and uncorrelated dependency of neutron cross section on the atomic number. The majority of neutron imaging experiments at the present time is conducted with static objects mainly due to the limited flux intensity of neutron beamline facilities and sometimes due to the limitations of the detectors. However, some applications require the studies of dynamic phenomena and can now be conducted at several high intensity beamlines such as the recently rebuilt ANTARES beam line at the FRM-II reactor. In this paper we demonstrate the capabilities of time resolved imaging for repetitive processes, where different phases of the process can be imaged simultaneously and integrated over multiple cycles. A fast MCP/Timepix neutron counting detector was used to image the water distribution within a model steam engine operating at 10 Hz frequency. Within <10 minutes integration the amount of water was measured as a function of cycle time with a sub-mm spatial resolution, thereby demonstrating the capabilities of time-resolved neutron radiography for the future applications. The neutron spectrum of the ANTARES beamline as well as transmission spectra of a Fe sample were also measured with the Time Of Flight (TOF) technique in combination with a high resolution beam chopper. The energy resolution of our setup was found to be ∼ 0.8% at 5 meV and ∼ 1.7% at 25 meV. The background level (most likely gammas and epithermal/fast neutrons) of the ANTARES beamline was also measured in our experiments and found to be on the scale of 3% when no filters are installed in the beam.

Online supplementary data available from stacks.iop.org/jinst/10/P07008/mmedia. The videos are given as supplementary material linked to the main article.

An analytical type-A approach is proposed for predicting the Worst-Case Uncertainty of a measurement system. In a set of independent observations of the same measurand, modelled as independent- and identically-distributed random variables, the upcoming extreme values (e.g. peaks) can be forecast by only characterizing the measurement system noise level, assumed to be white and Gaussian. Simulation and experimental results are presented to validate the model for a case study on the worst-case repeatability of a pulsed power supply for the klystron modulators of the Compact LInear Collider at CERN. The experimental validation highlights satisfying results for an acquisition system repeatable in the order of ±25 ppm over a bandwidth of 5 MHz.

Novel silicon detectors with charge gain were designed (Low Gain Avalanche Detectors - LGAD) to be used in particle physics experiments, medical and timing applications. They are based on a n⁺⁺-p⁺-p structure where appropriate doping of multiplication layer (p^+) is needed to achieve high fields and impact ionization. Several wafers were processed with different junction parameters resulting in gains of up to 16 at high voltages. In order to study radiation hardness of LGAD, which is one of key requirements for future high energy experiments, several sets of diodes were irradiated with reactor neutrons, 192 MeV pions and 800 MeV protons to the equivalent fluences of up to Φ_eq=10¹⁶ cm⁻². Transient Current Technique and charge collection measurements with LHC speed electronics were employed to characterize the detectors. It was found that the gain decreases with irradiation, which was attributed to effective acceptor removal in the multiplication layer. Other important aspects of operation of irradiated detectors such as leakage current and noise in the presence of charge multiplication were also investigated.

A prototype of Multi-strip Multi-gap Resistive Plate chamber (MMRPC) with active area 40 cm × 20 cm has been developed at SINP, Kolkata. Detailed response of the developed detector was studied with the pulsed electron beam from ELBE at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf. In this report the response of SINP developed MMRPC with different controlling parameters is described in details. The obtained time resolution (σ_t) of the detector after slew correction was 91.5 ± 3 ps. Position resolution measured along (σ_x) and across (σ_y) the strip was 2.8±0.6 cm and 0.58 cm, respectively. The measured absolute efficiency of the detector for minimum ionizing particle like electron was 95.8±1.3 %. Better timing resolution of the detector can be achieved by restricting the events to a single strip. The response of the detector was mainly in avalanche mode but a few percentage of streamer mode response was also observed. A comparison of the response of these two modes with trigger rate was studied.

Avalanches in gas-based detectors operating at atmospheric pressure and using Ar−CO₂ or Ne−CO₂ as drift medium produce in a first instance mainly Ar⁺, Ne⁺ and CO₂⁺ ions. The noble gas ions transfer their charge to CO₂ in a few ns. A few ns later, the CO₂⁺ ions have picked up CO₂ molecules, forming cluster ions, in particular CO₂⁺·(CO₂)_n. Since the cluster ions are slower than the initial ions, the signals induced by ion motion are altered. The effect is shown to be present in constant-field detectors and TPC readout chambers, and is expected to affect devices such as Micromegas and drift tubes.

In this study we report on the scintillation response of Xe gas under irradiation of gamma-rays in the energy range between 50 keV and 1.5 MeV. Xe gas was pressurized to 50 bar and tested as a detector for gamma spectroscopy. The gas was confined in a titanium vessel of 200 mm length and 101 mm diameter with 2.5 mm thick walls. The vessel was sealed with two 3 inch diameter UV transparent windows. The inner surface of the vessel was covered with a reflecting wavelength shifter. Two photomultipliers coupled to both windows at the end of the vessel allowed for registration of 3700 photoelectrons/MeV, which resulted in 7.0% energy resolution registered for 662 keV γ-rays from a ¹³⁷Cs source. The non-proportionality of the photoelectron yield and intrinsic resolution was studied with gamma photoabsorption peaks. Due to the thickness of the detector vessel, the response of the Xe gas as a scintillator in the low energy range was performed by means of a Compton Coincidence Technique and compared with the gamma absorption results. The shape of the non-proportionality characteristics of Xe gaseous scintillator was compared to the results obtained for NaI:Tl, LaBr₃:Ce and LYSO:Ce. A correlation between non-proportionality and intrinsic resolution of Xe gaseous scintillator was pointed out.

A sampling calorimeter using cerium fluoride scintillating crystals as active material, interleaved with heavy absorber plates, and read out by wavelength-shifting (WLS) fibers is being studied as a calorimeter option for detectors at the upgraded High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) collider at CERN. A prototype has been exposed to electron beams of different energies at the INFN Frascati (Italy) Beam Test Facility. This paper presents results from the studies performed on the prototype, such as signal amplitudes, light yield and energy resolution.

We performed imaging and therapy using I-131 trastuzumab and a pinhole collimator attached to a conventional gamma camera for human use in a mouse model. The conventional clinical gamma camera with a 2-mm radius-sized pinhole collimator was used for monitoring the animal model after administration of I-131 trastuzumab The highest and lowest radiation-received organs were osteogenic cells (0.349 mSv/MBq) and skin (0.137 mSv/MBq), respectively. The mean coefficients of variation (%CV) of the effective dose equivalent and effective dose were 0.091 and 0.093 mSv/MBq respectively. We showed the feasibility of the pinholeattached conventional gamma camera for human use for the assessment of dosimetry. Mouse dosimetry and prediction of human dosimetry could be used to provide data for the safety and efficacy of newly developed therapeutic schemes.

The proposed research focuses on the design criteria for a Compton Camera with high spatial resolution and sensitivity, operating at high gamma energies and its possible application for molecular imaging. This application is mainly on the detection and visualization of the pharmacokinetics of tumor targeting substances specific for particular cancer sites. Expected high resolution (< 0.5 mm) permits monitoring the pharmacokinetics of labeled gene constructs in vivo in small animals with a human tumor xenograft which is one of the first steps in evaluating the potential utility of a candidate gene. The additional benefit of high sensitivity detection will be improved cancer treatment strategies in patients based on the use of specific molecules binding to cancer sites for early detection of tumors and identifying metastasis, monitoring drug delivery and radionuclide therapy for optimum cell killing at the tumor site. This new technology can provide high resolution, high sensitivity imaging of a wide range of gamma energies and will significantly extend the range of radiotracers that can be investigated and used clinically. The small and compact construction of the proposed camera system allows flexible application which will be particularly useful for monitoring residual tumor around the resection site during surgery. It is also envisaged as able to test the performance of new drug/gene-based therapies in vitro and in vivo for tumor targeting efficacy using automatic large scale screening methods.

PACT is a Pair and Compton telescope that aims to make a sensitive survey of the gamma-ray sky between 100 keV and 100 MeV . It will be devoted to the detection of radioactivity lines from present and past supernova explosions, the observation of thousands of new blazars, and the study of polarized radiations from gamma-ray bursts, pulsars and accreting black holes. It will reach a sensitivity of one to two orders of magnitude lower than COMPTEL/CGRO (e.g. about 50 times lower for the broad-band, survey sensitivity at 1 MeV after 5 years). The PACT telescope is based upon three main components: a silicon-based gamma-ray tracker, a crystal-based calorimeter (e.g. CeBr₃), and an anticoincidence detector made of plastic scintillator panels. Prototypes of the Silicon detector planes have been optimized and are currently tested in the APC laboratory.

MUSIC is a multi-band imaging camera that employs 2304 Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) in 576 spatial pixels to cover a 14 arc-minute field of view, with each pixel simultaneously sensitive to 4 bands centered at 0.87, 1.04, 1.33, and 1.98 mm. In April 2012 the MUSIC instrument was commissioned at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory with a subset of the full focal plane. We examine the noise present in the detector timestreams during observations taken in the first year of operation. We find that fluctuations in atmospheric emission dominate at long timescales (< 0.5 Hz), and fluctuations in the amplitude and phase of the probe signal due to readout electronics contribute significant 1/f-type noise at shorter timescales. We describe a method to remove the amplitude, phase, and atmospheric noise using the fact that they are correlated among carrier tones. After removal, the complex signal is decomposed, or projected, into dissipation and frequency components. White noise from the cryogenic HEMT amplifier dominates in the dissipation component. An excess noise is observed in the frequency component that is likely due to fluctuations in two-level system (TLS) defects in the device substrate. We compare the amplitude of the TLS noise with previous measurements.

Direct measurements of charged cosmic radiation with instruments in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), or flying on balloons above the atmosphere, require the identification of the incident particle, the measurement of its energy and possibly the determination of its sign-of-charge. The latter information can be provided by a magnetic spectrometer together with a measurement of momentum. However, magnetic deflection in space experiments is at present limited to values of the Maximum Detectable Rigidity (MDR) hardly exceeding a few TV. Advanced calorimetric techniques are, at present, the only way to measure charged and neutral radiation at higher energies in the multi-TeV range. Despite their mass limitation, calorimeters may achieve a large geometric factor and provide an adequate proton background rejection factor, taking advantage of a fine granularity and imaging capabilities. In this lecture, after a brief introduction on electromagnetic and hadronic calorimetry, an innovative approach to the design of a space-borne, large acceptance, homogeneous calorimeter for the detection of high energy cosmic rays will be described.

Configuration and calibration of the front-end electronics typical of many silicon detector configurations were investigated in a lab activity based on a pair of strip sensors interfaced with FSSR2 read-out chips and an FPGA. This simple hardware configuration, originally developed for a telescope at the Fermilab Test Beam Facility, was used to measure thresholds and noise on individual readout channels and to study the influence that different configurations of the front-end electronics had on the observed levels of noise in the system. An understanding of the calibration and operation of this small detector system provided an opportunity to explore the architecture of larger systems such as those currently in use at LHC experiments.

CMOS Active pixel sensors (CMOS APS) are attractive for use in the innermost layers of charged particle trackers, due to their good tradeoffs among the key performances. However, CMOS APS can be greatly influenced by random telegraph signal (RTS) noise, which can cause particle tracking or energy calculation failures. In-depth research of pixels' RTS behavior stimulates the interest of the methods for RTS noise detection, reconstruction and parameters extraction. In this paper, a real-time auto-detection method is proposed, using real-time Gaussian noise standard deviation as the detection threshold. Experimental results show that, compared with current methods using signal standard deviation as the thresholds, the proposed method is more sensitive in multi-level RTS detection and more effective in the case of RTS noise degradation.

Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPM) are a new class of photon sensors with single photon detection capability and high photon detection efficiency. They have been proved to be suitable for an increasing number of applications in science and industry. Nowadays, different companies are investing increasing efforts in SiPM detector performances and high quality mass production, such to make them a natural choice for an always wider field of applications.

In this scenario, a flexible and easy-to-use system that allows the measurement of the main SiPM characteristics has become an important platform to exploit SiPMs in different applications. This system can also be used to setup a series of experiments aimed to train physics and engineering undergraduate and master students in detector measurements and statistics analysis.

We aim to evaluate the Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor for acceleration of 3D Positron Emission Tomography (PET) image reconstruction. We focus on the sensitivity map calculation as one computational intensive part of PET image reconstruction, since it is a promising candidate for acceleration with the Many Integrated Core (MIC) architecture of the Xeon Phi. The computation of the voxels in the field of view (FoV) can be done in parallel and the 10³ to 10⁴ samples needed to calculate the detection probability of each voxel can take advantage of vectorization.

We use the ray tracing kernels of the Embree project to calculate the hit points of the sample rays with the detector and in a second step the sum of the radiological path taking into account attenuation is determined. The core components are implemented using the Intel single instruction multiple data compiler (ISPC) to enable a portable implementation showing efficient vectorization either on the Xeon Phi and the Host platform. On the Xeon Phi, the calculation of the radiological path is also implemented in hardware specific intrinsic instructions (so-called `intrinsics') to allow manually-optimized vectorization. For parallelization either OpenMP and ISPC tasking (based on pthreads) are evaluated.Our implementation achieved a scalability factor of 0.90 on the Xeon Phi coprocessor (model 5110P) with 60 cores at 1 GHz. Only minor differences were found between parallelization with OpenMP and the ISPC tasking feature. The implementation using intrinsics was found to be about 12% faster than the portable ISPC version. With this version, a speedup of 1.43 was achieved on the Xeon Phi coprocessor compared to the host system (HP SL250s Gen8) equipped with two Xeon (E5-2670) CPUs, with 8 cores at 2.6 to 3.3 GHz each. Using a second Xeon Phi card the speedup could be further increased to 2.77. No significant differences were found between the results of the different Xeon Phi and the Host implementations. The examination showed that a reasonable speedup of sensitivity map calculation could be achieved on the Xeon Phi either by a portable or a hardware specific implementation.

Although most of the pixel "intelligence" is normally found on the electronics side, some important progress has been recently achieved in radiation sensors themselves, allowing for significant performance improvement and new application opportunities. This paper is focused on the most interesting elements of novelty that have characterized pixel sensors in the past few years, with emphasis on device and technological aspects. In particular, sensors exploiting the third dimension in silicon (i.e., 3D sensors and active edge sensors) are reviewed in detail.

We present results of beam tests of charged particle detectors based on single-crystal and poly-crystalline Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) diamond. We measured the signal pulse height dependence on the particle flux. The detectors were tested over a range of particle fluxes from 2 kHz/cm² to 20 MHz/cm². The pulse height of the sensors was measured with pad and pixel readout electronics. The pulse height of the non-irradiated single-crystal CVD diamond pad sensors was stable with respect to flux, while the pulse height of irradiated single-crystal CVD diamond pad sensors decreased with increasing particle flux. The pulse height of the non-irradiated single-crystal CVD diamond pixel detectors decreased slightly with increasing particle flux while the pulse height of the irradiated single-crystal CVD diamond pixel detectors decreased significantly with increasing particle flux. The observed sensitivity to flux is similar in both the diamond pad sensors constructed using diamonds from the Pixel Luminosity Telescope (PLT) irradiated during its pilot run in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector and in neutron irradiated diamond pad sensors from the same manufacturer irradiated to the same fluence of neutrons. The pulse height for irradiated poly-crystalline CVD diamond pad sensors proved to be stable with respect to particle flux.

Cluster position reconstruction for the LHCb Vertex Locator test beam software currently uses a linear centre of gravity algorithm. To investigate possible improvements of this approach, a study was performed that made use of a non-linear centre-of-gravity algorithm. All of the sensors in this study were Timepix chips with a 300 μ m layer of p-on-n silicon. The position resolutions obtained with the linear centre-of-gravity ranged between 5.5 μ m and 6.1 μ m. Applying the tuned non-linear algorithm reduces these by at least 0.6 μ m.

SHiP is a newly proposed fixed-target experiment at the CERN SPS with the aim of searching for hidden particles that interact very weakly with Standard Model particles. The work presented in this document investigates SHiP's physics reach in the parameter space of the Neutrino Minimal Standard Model (νMSM), a theory that could solve most problems unexplained by the Standard Model by incorporating sterile neutrinos. A model introducing an extra U(1) symmetry in the hidden sector, providing a natural candidate for dark matter, is also explored. This work shows that the SHiP experiment can improve the sensitivity to Heavy Neutral Leptons below 2 GeV by several orders of magnitude, scanning a large part of the parameter space below the B meson mass. The remainder of the νMSM parameter space, dominated by right-handed neutrinos with masses above 2 GeV, can be explored at a future e⁺e⁻ collider. Similarly, SHiP can greatly improve present constraints on U(1) dark photons.

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are finding extensive application in instrumentation for particle physics experiments. A table-top framework is developed using FPGA-based hardware to detect the coincidence of signals produced by cosmic rays in multiple detectors. The rates of the detector signals and coincidence output are also measured. The logic is programmed inside an FPGA mounted on a Xilinx evaluation board. Control and data readout are carried out using IPbus, a gigabit Ethernet-based protocol developed as part of upgrading the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) . The framework is appropriate for introducing students to FPGA-based instrumentation and providing them with a practical experience of working with such hardware.

Signal processing and communications are driving the latest generation of radio telescopes with major developments taking place for use on the Square Kilometre Array, SKA, the next generation low frequency radio telescope. The data rates and processing performance that can be achieved with currently available components means that concepts from the earlier days of radio astronomy, phased arrays, can be used at higher frequencies, larger bandwidths and higher numbers of beams. Indeed it has been argued that the use of dishes as a mechanical beamformer only gained strong acceptance to mitigate the processing load from phased array technology. The balance is changing and benefits in both performance and cost can be realised.

In this paper we will mostly consider the signal processing implementation and control for very large phased arrays consisting of hundreds of thousands of antennas or even millions of antennas. They can use current technology for the initial deployments. These systems are very large extending to hundreds of racks with thousands of signal processing modules that link through high-speed, but commercially available data networking devices. There are major challenges to accurately calibrate the arrays, mitigate power consumption and make the system maintainable.

The Square Kilometre Array is a next-generation radio-telescope, to be built in South Africa and Western Australia. It is currently in its detailed design phase, with procurement and construction scheduled to start in 2017. The SKA Science Data Processor is the high-performance computing element of the instrument, responsible for producing science-ready data. This is a major IT project, with the Science Data Processor expected to challenge the computing state-of-the art even in 2020. In this paper we introduce the preliminary Science Data Processor design and the principles that guide the design process, as well as the constraints to the design. We introduce a highly scalable and flexible system architecture capable of handling the SDP workload.

The design of a simple lens system is described capable of projecting a diffraction limited f1/.2 point of light through a variety of plane parallel vacuum windows. The system was built for the purpose of testing prototype CCDs for the Large Synpotic Survey Telescope in which lab testing drove the desire to create a beam that matches the telescope's f-ratio and obstruction, and which would have sufficient back-focal distance to allow imaging onto a sensor at least 50 mm away in various dewars with various window thicknesses. Also used as the final optic in an atmospheric turbulence simulator, the lens can simulate the real-world star PSF as it will appear on the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) focal plane.

A revolution in radio receiving technology is underway with the development of densely packed phased arrays for radio astronomy. This technology can provide an exceptionally large field of view, while at the same time sampling the sky with high angular resolution. Such an instrument, with a field of view of over 100 square degrees, is ideal for performing fast, all-sky, surveys, such as the ``intensity mapping'' experiment to measure the signature of Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations in the HI mass distribution at cosmological redshifts. The SKA, built with this technology, will be able to do a billion galaxy survey. I will present a very brief introduction to radio interferometry, as well as an overview of the Square Kilometre Array project. This will be followed by a description of the EMBRACE prototype and a discussion of results and future plans.

A new detector concept is currently under development for the proposed multi-TeV linear e⁺e⁻ Compact Linear Collider (CLIC). The impact of the detector geometry on the physics performance of the CLIC vertex detector is being investigated. Different options for the barrel detector and alternative layouts of the endcap regions fulfilling engineering requirements while minimising the material budget are considered. This study is based on a full detector simulation using GEANT4. The beauty and charm flavour-tagging performances for different jet energies and polar angles are the key observables used to compare the different investigated detector configurations.

The second workshop to discuss the development of liquid argon time projection chambers (LArTPCs) in the United States was held at Fermilab on July 8-9, 2014. The workshop was organized under the auspices of the Coordinating Panel for Advanced Detectors, a body that was initiated by the American Physical Society Division of Particles and Fields. All presentations at the workshop were made in six topical plenary sessions: i) Argon Purity and Cryogenics, ii) TPC and High Voltage, iii) Electronics, Data Acquisition and Triggering, iv) Scintillation Light Detection, v) Calibration and Test Beams, and vi) Software. This document summarizes the current efforts in each of these areas. It primarily focuses on the work in the US, but also highlights work done elsewhere in the world.

This paper presents FADE-10G—an integrated solution for modern multichannel measurement systems. Its main aim is a low latency, reliable transmission of measurement data from FPGA-based front-end electronic boards (FEBs) to a computer-based node in the Data Acquisition System (DAQ), using a standard Ethernet 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps link. In addition to transmission of data, the system allows the user to send reliably simple control commands from DAQ to FEB and to receive responses.

The aim of the work is to provide a possible simple base solution, which can be adapted by the end user to his or her particular needs. Therefore, the emphasis is put on the minimal consumption of FPGA resources in FEB and the minimal CPU load in the DAQ computer. The open source implementation of the FPGA IP core and the Linux kernel driver published under permissive license facilitates modifications and reuse of the solution. The system has been successfully tested in real hardware, both with 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps links.

The pixelated semiconductor based on cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) is a promising imaging device that provides many benefits compared with conventional scintillation detectors. By using a high-resolution square parallel-hole collimator with a pixelated semiconductor detector, we were able to improve both sensitivity and spatial resolution. Here, we present a simulation of a CZT pixleated semiconductor single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) system with a high-resolution square parallel-hole collimator using various geometric designs of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 mm X-axis hole size. We performed a simulation study of the eValuator-2500 (eV Microelectronics Inc., Saxonburg, PA, U.S.A.) CZT pixelated semiconductor detector using a Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission (GATE). To evaluate the performances of these systems, the sensitivity and spatial resolution was evaluated. Moreover, to evaluate the overall performance of the imaging system, a hot-rod phantom was designed. Our results showed that the average sensitivity of the 2.0 mm collimator X-axis hole size was 1.34, 1.95, and 3.92 times higher than that of the 1.5, 1.0, and 0.5 mm collimator X-axis hole size, respectively. Also, the average spatial resolution of the 0.5 mm collimator X-axis hole size was 28.69, 44.65, and 55.73% better than that of the 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 mm collimator X-axis hole size, respectively. We discuss the high-resolution square parallel-hole collimator of various collimator geometric designs and our evaluations. In conclusion, we have successfully designed a high-resolution square parallel-hole collimator with a CZT pixelated semiconductor SPECT system.

Experimental data are presented, obtained with a ΔE-E semiconductor detector combined with a CsI(Tl) inorganic scintillator crystal. The interaction between a beam of accelerated nuclei and thin targets is analyzed. We show that, as a result of this interaction, the secondary particles, including δ-electrons, are generated. In the case of δ-electrons it is possible to study the beam characteristics and the nature of interaction processes, which is of great interest in high-energy interaction.

A low energy photon spectrometer (LEPS), which is a composite planar HPGe, has been characterised experimentally. It has been shown that beyond 200 keV, effect of image charges deteriorates the efficiency of the detector in its addback mode. Data have been corrected on event-by-event basis resulting in improvement of the performance.

At present most radiation dose meters have serious problems on aspects of energy response and angular response. In order to improve the accuracy of dose measurements, a method of average angular response has been proposed. The method can not only correct the energy response, but also the angular response. This method has been verified on NaI(Tl)(50 mm× 50 mm) scintillation detectors, but has not been proved on other types and sizes of detectors, In this paper the method is also verified for LaBr₃(Ce) scintillation detectors and HPGe detector To apply the method, first of all, five detectors are simulated by Geant4 and average angular response values are calculated. Then experiments are performed to get the count rates of full energy peak by standard point source of ¹³⁷Cs, ⁶⁰Co and ¹⁵²Eu. After that the dose values of five detectors are calculated with the method of average angular response. Finally experimental results are got. These results are divided into two groups to analyze the impact of detectors of various types and sizes. The result of the first group shows that the method is appropriate for different types of detector to measure dose, with deviations of less than 5% compared with theoretical values. Moreover, when the detector's energy resolution is better and the count rate of the full energy peak is calculated more precisely, the measured dose can be obtained more precisely. At the same time, the result of the second group illustrates that the method is also suited for different sizes of detectors, with deviations of less than 8% compared with theoretical values.

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