Table of contents

Charge collection properties of depleted CMOS pixel detector prototypes produced on p-type substrate of 2 kΩ cm initial resistivity (by LFoundry 150 nm process) were studied using Edge-TCT method before and after neutron irradiation. The test structures were produced for investigation of CMOS technology in tracking detectors for experiments at HL-LHC upgrade. Measurements were made with passive detector structures in which current pulses induced on charge collecting electrodes could be directly observed. Thickness of depleted layer was estimated and studied as function of neutron irradiation fluence. An increase of depletion thickness was observed after first two irradiation steps to 1 · 10¹³ n/cm² and 5 · 10¹³ n/cm² and attributed to initial acceptor removal. At higher fluences the depletion thickness at given voltage decreases with increasing fluence because of radiation induced defects contributing to the effective space charge concentration. The behaviour is consistent with that of high resistivity silicon used for standard particle detectors. The measured thickness of the depleted layer after irradiation with 1 · 10¹⁵ n/cm² is more than 50 μm at 100 V bias. This is sufficient to guarantee satisfactory signal/noise performance on outer layers of pixel trackers in HL-LHC experiments.

A High-speed and low-power VCSEL driver is an important component of the Versatile Link for the high-luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) experiments. A compact low-power radiation-hard 4 × 10 Gb/s VCSEL driver array (LDQ10) has been developed in 65 nm CMOS technology. Each channel in LDQ10 can provide a modulation current up to 8 mA and bias current up to 12 mA. Edge pre-emphasis is employed to compensate for the bandwidth limitations due to parasitic and the turn-on delay of VCSEL devices. LDQ10 occupies a chip area of 1900 μm × 1700 μm and consumes 130 mW power for typical current settings. The modulation amplitude degrades less than 5% after 300 Mrad total ionizing dose. LDQ10 can be directly wire-bonded to the VCSEL array and it is a suitable candidate for the Versatile Link.

Rare event search experiments, such as those searching for dark matter and observations of neutrinoless double beta decay, require ultra low levels of radioactive background for unmistakable identification. In order to reduce the radioactive background of detectors used in these types of event searches, low background photosensors are required, as the physical size of these detectors become increasing larger, and hence the number of such photosensors used also increases rapidly. Considering that most dark matter and neutrinoless double beta decay experiments are turning towards using noble liquids as the target choice, liquid xenon and liquid argon for instance, photosensors that can work well at cryogenic temperatures are required, 165 K and 87 K for liquid xenon and liquid argon, respectively. The Silicon Geiger Hybrid Tube (SiGHT) is a novel photosensor designed specifically for use in ultra low background experiments operating at cryogenic temperatures. It is based on the proven photocathode plus silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) hybrid technology and consists of very few other, but also ultra radio-pure, materials like fused silica and silicon for the SiPM. The introduction of the SiGHT concept, as well as a feasibility study for its production, is reported in this paper.

CdZnTe crystals are nowadays employed as X-ray detectors for a number of applications, such as medical imaging, security, and environmental monitoring. One of the main difficulties connected with CdZnTe-based detector processing is the poor contact adhesion that affect bonding procedures and device long term stability. We have shown that it is possible to obtain mechanically stable contacts by common electroless deposition using alcoholic solutions instead of water solutions. The contacts show blocking current-voltage characteristic that is required for obtaining spectroscopic detectors. Nanoscale-resolved chemical analysis indicated that the improved mechanical adhesion is due to a better control of the stoichiometry of the CdZnTe layer below the contact.

This paper describes the design and construction of the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber and associated systems. MicroBooNE is the first phase of the Short Baseline Neutrino program, located at Fermilab, and will utilize the capabilities of liquid argon detectors to examine a rich assortment of physics topics. In this document details of design specifications, assembly procedures, and acceptance tests are reported.

This work describes the preparation of three ⁷Be targets which were used in two independent measurements of the ⁷Be(n,α)⁴He cross section in the energy range of interest for the Big-Bang nucleosynthesis at the n_TOF-CERN facility and at Soreq-SARAF . A more precise value of this cross section could shed light on the long lasting "Cosmological Lithium problem". Two methods for target preparation were used. A target was obtained by deposition and subsequent air-drying of (24.50± 0.54) GBq of Be(NO₃)₂ droplets precisely positioned onto a stretched low density polyethylene film 0.635 μm thick. The thickness of the deposited Be(NO₃)₂ layer was deduced using Monte-Carlo simulations to be 0.36 μm. The energy loss of 8500 keV alpha particles passing through the target obtained by air-drying of ⁷Be(NO₃)₂ droplets was estimated to be 88 keV . Two other targets were prepared via molecular plating onto ∼ 5 μm and 1 mm thick aluminium backings, respectively. The first was obtained by molecular plating (24.47± 0.53) GBq of ⁷Be, resulting in a deposited layer of Be(OH)₂, 1.04 μm thick. The second molecular plated target was obtained depositing (3.95± 0.08) GBq of ⁷Be. The mean energy loss of 8500 keV alpha particles, passing through the molecular plated target with 5 μm thick aluminium backings was estimated as 814 keV . The energy loss by 8500 keV alpha particles in all the obtained targets is considered tolerable for the envisaged cross section measurements. The preparation and characterization of the targets is here described.

The STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (U.K.) and Tomsk State University (Russia) have been working together to develop and characterise detector systems based on chromium-compensated gallium arsenide (GaAs:Cr) semiconductor material for high frame rate X-ray imaging. Previous work has demonstrated the spectroscopic performance of the material and its resistance to damage induced by high fluxes of X-rays. In this paper, recent results from experiments at the Diamond Light Source Synchrotron have demonstrated X-ray imaging with GaAs:Cr sensors at a frame rate of 3.7 MHz using the Large Pixel Detector (LPD) ASIC, developed by STFC for the European XFEL. Measurements have been made using a monochromatic 20 keV X-ray beam delivered in a single hybrid pulse with an instantenous flux of up to ∼ 1 × 10¹⁰ photons s⁻¹ mm⁻². The response of 500 μm GaAs:Cr sensors is compared to that of the standard 500 μm thick LPD Si sensors.

Improved jet energy scale corrections, based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb^-1 collected by the CMS experiment in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV, are presented. The corrections as a function of pseudorapidity η and transverse momentum p_T are extracted from data and simulated events combining several channels and methods. They account successively for the effects of pileup, uniformity of the detector response, and residual data-simulation jet energy scale differences. Further corrections, depending on the jet flavor and distance parameter (jet size) R, are also presented. The jet energy resolution is measured in data and simulated events and is studied as a function of pileup, jet size, and jet flavor. Typical jet energy resolutions at the central rapidities are 15–20% at 30 GeV, about 10% at 100 GeV, and 5% at 1 TeV. The studies exploit events with dijet topology, as well as photon+jet, Z+jet and multijet events. Several new techniques are used to account for the various sources of jet energy scale corrections, and a full set of uncertainties, and their correlations, are provided.The final uncertainties on the jet energy scale are below 3% across the phase space considered by most analyses (p_T;>30 GeV and 0| η| <5.). In the barrel region (| η| <1.3) an uncertainty below 1% for p_T>30 GeV is reached, when excluding the jet flavor uncertainties, which are provided separately for different jet flavors. A new benchmark for jet energy scale determination at hadron colliders is achieved with 0.32% uncertainty for jets with \pt of the order of 165–330\GeV, and | η| <0.8.

Naturally Occureed Radioactive Material (NORM) generated from the origin of earth can be found all around us and even people who are not engaged in the work related to radiation have been exposed to unnecessary radiation. This NORM has a potential risk provided that is concentrated or transformed by artificial activities. Likewise, a development of fast measruement method of NORM is emerging to prevent the radiation exposure of the general public and person engaged in the work related to the type of business related thereto who uses the material in which NORM is concentrated or transfromed. Based on such a background, many of countries have tried to manage NORM and carried out regulatory legislation. To effienctly manage NORM, there is need for developing new measurement to quickly and accurately analyze the nuclide and concentration. In this study, development of the fast and reliable measurement was carried out. In addition to confirming the reliability of the fast measurement, we have obtained results that can suggest the possibility of developing another fast measurement. Therefore, as a follow-up, it is possible to develop another fast analytical measurement afterwards. The results of this study will be very useful for the regulatory system to manage NORM. In this study, a review of two indirect measurement methods of NORM U-238 that has used HPGe on the basis of the equilibrium theory of relationships of mother and daughter nuclide at decay-chain of NORM U-238 has been carried out. For comparative study(in order to know reliabily), direct measurement that makes use of alpha spectrometer with complicated pre-processing process was implemented.

SF₆ is an inert and electronegative gas that has a long history of use in high voltage insulation and numerous other industrial applications. Although SF₆ is used as a trace component to introduce stability in tracking chambers, its highly electronegative properties have limited its use in tracking detectors. In this work we present a series of measurements with SF₆ as the primary gas in a low pressure Time Projection Chamber (TPC), with a thick GEM used as the avalanche and readout device. The first results of an ₅₅Fe energy spectrum in SF₆ are presented. Measurements of the mobility and longitudinal diffusion confirm the negative ion drift of SF₆. However, the observed waveforms have a peculiar but interesting structure that indicates multiple drift species and a dependence on the reduced field (E/p), as well as on the level of water vapor contamination. The discovery of a distinct secondary peak in the waveform, together with its identification and use for fiducializing events in the TPC, are also presented. Our measurements demonstrate that SF₆ is an ideal gas for directional dark matter detection. In particular, the high fluorine content is desirable for spin-dependent sensitivity, negative ion drift ensures low diffusion over large drift distances, and the multiple species of charge carriers allow for full detector fiducialization.

In this paper, we present experimental and numerical studies of the calibration of low-multiplicity electron source using signals from electrons incident on a diamond detector. The experiments were performed at the newly commissioned versatile LEETECH platform at the PHIL photoinjector facility at LAL. We show that with a single crystal CVD diamonds of 500 micrometers thickness, the energy losses from the first three electrons of 2.5–3 MeV are clearly resolved. The described technique can be used as a complementary approach for calibration of diamond detectors as well as for diagnostics of accelerated beam halos in a regime down to a few particles.

CMOS active pixel sensors are being investigated for their potential use in the ATLAS inner tracker upgrade at the HL-LHC. The new inner tracker will have to handle a significant increase in luminosity while maintaining a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio and pulse shaping times. This paper focuses on the prototype chip "HVStripV1" (manufactured in the AMS HV-CMOS 350nm process) characterization before and after irradiation up to fluence levels expected for the strip region in the HL-LHC environment. The results indicate an increase of depletion region after irradiation for the same bias voltage by a factor of ≈2.4 and ≈2.8 for two active pixels on the test chip. There was also a notable increase in noise levels from 85 e⁻ to 386 e⁻ and from 75 e⁻ to 277 e⁻ for the corresponding pixels.

Minimal spanning trees (MSTs) have been used in cosmology and astronomy to distinguish distributions of points in a multi-dimensional space. They are essentially unknown in particle physics, however. We briefly define MSTs and illustrate their properties through a series of examples. We show how they might be applied to study a typical event sample from a collider experiment and conclude that MSTs may prove useful in distinguishing different classes of events.

The High Performance Time to Digital Converter (HPTDC), a multi-channel ASIC designed by the CERN Microelectronics group, has been proposed for the digitization of the thin-Resistive Plate Chambers (tRPC) in the ATLAS Muon Spectrometer Phase-1 upgrade project. These chambers, to be staged for higher luminosity LHC operation, will increase trigger acceptance and reduce or eliminate the fake muon trigger rates in the barrel-endcap transition region, corresponding to pseudo-rapidity range 1<|η|<1.3. Low level trigger candidates must be flagged within a maximum latency of 1075 ns, thus imposing stringent signal processing time performance requirements on the readout system in general, and on the digitization electronics in particular. This paper investigates the HPTDC signal latency performance based on a specially designed evaluation board coupled with an external FPGA evaluation board, when operated in triggerless mode, and under hit rate conditions expected in Phase-I. This hardware based study confirms previous simulations and demonstrates that the HPTDC in triggerless operation satisfies the digitization timing requirements in both leading edge and pair modes.

An improved analysis method to extract quark helicity distributions in leading order (LO) QCD from semi-inclusive double spin asymmetries in deep inelastic scattering is presented. The method relies on the fact that fragmentation functions, describing the fragmentation of a quark into a hadron, have a strong dependence on the energy fraction z of the observed hadron. Hadrons with large z contain more information about the struck quark. This can be used in a weighting procedure to improve the figure of merit (= inverse of variance). In numerical examples it is shown that one could gain 15–39% depending on the quark flavor and cut on z. Mathematically the problem can be described as finding an optimal solution in terms of the figure of merit for parameters Θ determined from a system of linear equations B(x) Θ =Y(x), where the measured input vector Y(x) is given as event distributions depending on a random variable x, the coefficients of the matrix B(x) depend as well on x, whereas the parameter vector Θ to be determined does not.

Atmospheric conditions, such as the pressure (P), temperature (T) or air density (ρ ∝ P/T), affect the development of extended air showers initiated by energetic cosmic rays. We study the impact of the atmospheric variations on the reconstruction of air showers with data from the arrays of surface detectors of the Pierre Auger Observatory, considering separately the one with detector spacings of 1500 m and the one with 750 m spacing. We observe modulations in the event rates that are due to the influence of the air density and pressure variations on the measured signals, from which the energy estimators are obtained. We show how the energy assignment can be corrected to account for such atmospheric effects.

We undertook a comparative study on optimizing the position accuracy of pnCCDs for single X-ray photon measurements. Various methods were analyzed by Monte Carlo simulations and related to experimental data obtained with a focused X-ray beam. Even with low energy photons of 1320 eV, a position accuracy much smaller than the actual pixel size of 48 μm × 48 μm can be achieved. This is possible since signal charges from a single photon interaction spread into more than one pixel, allowing a reconstruction of the original point of interaction. We found that a) making a decision on which pixels to use for the reconstruction and b) choosing a centroiding algorithm for carrying out the reconstruction were particularly crucial. For a) we introduce a new and superior method using a two step analysis with an adaptive pattern. It is compared to using a threshold or a fixed pattern. For b) we present a Center-of-Gravity method with a Gaussian correction taking into account the shape of the signal charge cloud. Both methods are also optimized for fast execution by implementing lookup tables rather than time consuming calculations. Our results show that with the appropriate analysis an uncertainty of the position measurement of better than 3.0 μm rms for 1320 eV photons is possible.

A new ultra low-background spectrometer based on a HPGe detector with a sensitive volume of 600 cm³ was developed to investigate rare nuclear processes, such as resonant neutrino-less double electron capture (0νEC/EC) and double beta decay processes (2ν2β⁻, 2νβ⁺EC, 2νEC/EC) to the excited states of daughter nuclei. The spectrometer was installed at the Modane underground laboratory (LSM, France, 4800 m w.e.). Sensitivity of the spectrometer and its background were tested. A new method for the efficiency calibration in measurements of low-active samples was developed. The spectrometer was used for the measurements of low active materials and samples. Results obtained in 395 h investigation of resonant 0νEC/EC decay of ¹⁰⁶Cd to the 2718 keV and 2741 keV excited states of ¹⁰⁶Pd with ∼23.2 g of enriched ¹⁰⁶Cd and 2ν2β⁻ decay of ¹⁰⁰Mo sample with a mass of 2588 g to the 0⁺, 1130 keV and 2⁺, 539.5 keV excited states of ¹⁰⁰Ru are presented.

The CMS experiment at LHC will upgrade its forward muon spectrometer by incorporating Triple-GEM detectors. This upgrade referred to as GEM Endcap (GE1/1), consists of adding two back-to-back Triple-GEM detectors in front of the existing Cathode Strip Chambers (CSC) in the innermost ring of the endcap muon spectrometer. Before the full installation of 144 detectors in 2019–2020, CMS will first install ten single chamber prototypes during the early 2017. This pre-installation is referred as the slice test. These ten detectors will be read-out by VFAT2 chips [1]. On-detector there is also a FPGA mezzanine card which sends VFAT2 data optically to the μTCA back-end electronics. The correct and safe operation of the GEM system requires a sophisticated and powerful online Detector Control System, able to monitor and control many heterogeneous hardware devices. The DCS system developed for the slice test has been tested with CMS Triple-GEM detectors in the laboratory. In this paper we describe the newly developed DCS system and present the first results obtained in the GEM assembly and quality assurance laboratory.

The parallel-plate free-air ionization chamber termed FAC-IR-300 was designed at the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, AEOI. This chamber is used for low and medium X-ray dosimetry on the primary standard level. In order to evaluate the air-kerma, some correction factors such as electron-loss correction factor (k_e) and photon scattering correction factor (k_sc) are needed. k_e factor corrects the charge loss from the collecting volume and k_sc factor corrects the scattering of photons into collecting volume. In this work k_e and k_sc were estimated by Monte Carlo simulation. These correction factors are calculated for mono-energy photon. As a result of the simulation data, the k_e and k_sc values for FAC-IR-300 ionization chamber are 1.0704 and 0.9982, respectively.

This paper introduces miniPixD: a new, compact system that utilises transmission X-ray imaging and X-ray diffraction (XRD) to locate and identify materials of interest within an otherwise opaque volume. The system and the embodied techniques have utility in security screening, medical diagnostics, non-destructive testing (NDT) and quality assurance (QA). This paper outlines the design of the system including discussion on the choice of components and presents some data from relevant samples which are compared to other energy dispersive and angular dispersive XRD techniques.

The CMS pixel detector phase 1 upgrade in 2017 requires an upgraded data acquisition (DAQ) system to accept higher data rates. A new DAQ system has been developed based on a combination of custom and standard μTCA parts. Custom mezzanines on FC7 AMCs [1] provide a front-end driver for readout, and a front-end controller for configuration, clock and trigger. The DAQ system is undergoing a series of integration tests including readout of the pilot pixel detector already installed in CMS, checkout of the phase 1 detector during its assembly, and testing with the CMS central DAQ. This paper describes the DAQ system, integration tests and results, and an outline of the activities up to commissioning the final system at CMS in 2017.

Segmented silicon sensors with internal gain, the so called Ultra-FAST Silicon Detectors (UFSD), have been produced at FBK for the first time. UFSD are based on the concept of Low-Gain Avalanche Detectors (LGAD), which are silicon detectors with an internal, low multiplication mechanism (gain ∼ 10). This production houses two main type of devices: one type where the gain layer is on the same side of the read-out electrodes, the other type where the gain layer is on the side opposite to the pixellated electrodes (reverse-LGAD). Several technological splits have been included in the first production run, with the aim to tune the implantation dose of the multiplication layer, which controls the gain value of the detector. An extended testing on the wafers has been performed and the results are in line with simulations: the fabricated detectors show good performances, with breakdown voltages above 1000 Volts, and gain values in the range of 5–60 depending on the technological split. The detectors timing resolution has been measured by means of a laboratory setup based on an IR picosecond laser. The sample with higher gain shows time resolution of 55 ps at high reverse bias voltage, indicating very promising performance for future particle tracking applications.

We present a resistive Micromegas detector built with two different pillar shapes. The pillars are elongated and extend in the direction orthogonal to the readout strips. One region features pillars of 2 mm × 0.2 mm with 4.8 mm pitch while in the other region the pillars extend over the full width of the detector. The larger surface of the pillars allows for a better adhesion to the readout structure and a more uniform amplification gap. Results on the detector performance for the two regions are presented. No striking performance differences between the two regions were found.

Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) is a well-established scanning electron microscope (SEM)-based technique [1]. It allows the non-destructive mapping of the crystal structure, texture, crystal phase and strain with a spatial resolution of tens of nanometers. Conventionally this is performed by placing an electron sensitive screen, typically consisting of a phosphor screen combined with a charge coupled device (CCD) camera, in front of a specimen, usually tilted 70° to the normal of the exciting electron beam. Recently, a number of authors have shown that a significant increase in spatial resolution is achievable when Kikuchi diffraction patterns are acquired in transmission geometry; that is when diffraction patterns are generated by electrons transmitted through an electron-transparent, usually thinned, specimen. The resolution of this technique, called transmission Kikuchi diffraction (TKD), has been demonstrated to be better than 10 nm [2,3]. We have recently demonstrated the advantages of a direct electron detector, Timepix [4,5], for the acquisition of standard EBSD patterns [5]. In this article we will discuss the advantages of Timepix to perform TKD and for acquiring spot diffraction patterns and more generally for acquiring scanning transmission electron microscopy micrographs in the SEM. Particularly relevant for TKD, is its very compact size, which allows much more flexibility in the positioning of the detector in the SEM chamber. We will furthermore show recent results using Timepix as a virtual forward scatter detector, and will illustrate the information derivable on producing images through processing of data acquired from different areas of the detector. We will show results from samples ranging from gold nanoparticles to nitride semiconductor nanorods.

The Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB asymmetric energy e⁺e⁻ collider in KEK, Japan will operate at an instantaneous luminosity 40 times larger than that of its predecessor, Belle. It is built with an aim of collecting a huge amount of data (50 ab⁻¹ by 2025) for precise CP violation measurements and new physics search. Thus, we need an accurate vertex determination and reconstruction of low momentum tracks which will be achieved with the help of vertex detector (VXD). The Belle II VXD consists of two layers of DEPFET pixels (`Pixel Detector') and four layers of double-sided silicon microstrip sensors (`Silicon Vertex Detector'), assembled over carbon fibre ribs. In this paper, we discuss about the Belle II Silicon Vertex Detector, especially its design and key features; we also present its module (`ladder') assembly and testing procedures.

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanners require high performances in term of spatial resolution and sensitivity to allow early detection of cancer masses. In small animal and organ dedicated PET scanners the Depth of Interaction (DOI) information has to be obtained to avoid parallax errors and to reconstruct high resolution images. In the whole body PET, the DOI information can be useful to correct for the time jitter of the optical photons along the main axis of the scintillator, improving the time performances. In this work we present the development of PET module designed to reach high performance as compared to the current scanners while keeping the complexity of the system reasonably low. The module presented is based on a 64 LYSO (Lutetium-yttrium oxyorthosilicate) crystals matrix and on a 4×4 MPPC (Multi Pixels Photon Counter) array as detector in a 4 to 1 coupling between the crystals and the detector and a single side readout. The lateral surfaces of the crystals are optically treated to be unpolished. The DOI and the energy resolution of the PET module are presented and a fast method to obtain the DOI calibration is discussed.

We review the progress toward the development of a novel type of silicon detectors suited for tracking with a picosecond timing resolution, the so called Ultra-Fast Silicon Detectors. The goal is to create a new family of particle detectors merging excellent position and timing resolution with GHz counting capabilities, very low material budget, radiation resistance, fine granularity, low power, insensitivity to magnetic field, and affordability. We aim to achieve concurrent precisions of ∼ 10 ps and ∼ 10 μm with a 50 μm thick sensor. Ultra-Fast Silicon Detectors are based on the concept of Low-Gain Avalanche Detectors, which are silicon detectors with an internal multiplication mechanism so that they generate a signal which is factor ∼ 10 larger than standard silicon detectors.

To deal with the instantaneous luminosity of the LHC after the Long Shutdown 2 in 2018/19, several subsystems of the LHCb detector have to be exchanged or upgraded. For this purpose, the Scintillating Fibre (SciFi) Tracker is being built to replace the current downstream tracking system. The base of this new tracker are 2.5m long scintillating fibres (⌀  250µm) in which light is generated by passing charged particles. The fibres are arranged in six-layer fibre mats which are read out with the help of silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) at the edge of the tracker's acceptance. The tracker will cover an area larger than 340m². To produce the required total of 1024 fibre mats, serial production was set up at several production sites. To assure the quality of the fibre mats, they are subject to various tests during the production. The different production steps as well as the quality assurance measurements will be presented.

This work presents a low cost fluorescence life time measurement system, aimed at carrying out fast diagnostic tests through label detection in a portable system so it can be used in a medical consultation, within a short time span. The system uses Time Correlated Single Photon Counting (TCSPC), measuring the arrival time of individual photons and building a histogram of those times, showing the fluorescence decay of the label which is characteristic of each fluorescent substance. The system is implemented using a Xilinx FPGA which controls the experiment and includes a Time to Digital Converter (TDC) to perform measurements with a resolution in the order of tenths of picoseconds. Also included are a laser diode and the driving electronics to generate short pulses as well as a HV-CMOS implemented Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) as a high gain sensor. The system is entirely configurable so it can easily be adapted to the target label molecule and measurement needs. The histogram is constructed within the FPGA and can then be read as convenient. Various performance parameters are also shown, as well as experimental measurements of a quantum dot fluorescence decay as a proof of concept.

In this paper, an ASIC fabricated in 180 nm CMOS technology from AMS with the very front-end electronics used to readout LGAD sensors is presented as well as its experimental results. The front-end has the typical architecture for Si-strip readout, i.e., preamplification stage with a Charge Sensitive Amplifier (CSA) followed by a CR-RC shaper. Both amplifiers are based on a folded cascode structure with a PMOS input transistor and the shaper only uses passive elements for the feedback stage. The CSA has programmable gain and a configurable input stage in order to adapt to the different input capacitance of the LGAD sensors (pixelated, short and long strips) and to the different input signal (depending on the gain of the LGAD). The fabricated prototype has an area of 0.865 mm × 0.965 mm and includes the biasing circuit for the CSA and the shaper, 4 analog channels (CSA+shaper) and programmable charge injection circuits included for testing purposes. Noise and power analysis performed during simulation fixed the size of the input transistor to W/L = 860 μm/0.2 μm. The shaping time is fixed by design at 1 us and, in this ASIC version, the feedback elements of the shaper are passive, which means that the area of the shaper can be reduced using active elements in future versions. Finally, the different gains of the CSA have been selected to maintain an ENC below 400 electrons for a detector capacitor of 20 pF, with a power consumption of 150 μ W per channel.

Real-time track reconstruction at high event rates is a major challenge for future experiments in high energy physics. To perform pattern-recognition and track fitting, artificial retina or Hough transformation methods have been introduced in the field which have to be implemented in FPGA firmware. In this note we report on a case study of a possible FPGA hardware implementation approach of the retina algorithm based on a Floating-Point core. Detailed measurements with this algorithm are investigated. Retina performance and capabilities of the FPGA are discussed along with perspectives for further optimization and applications.

The strip isolation of AC-coupled n-on-p silicon strip sensors is compromised by positive charges located in the oxide above the silicon bulk. These positive oxide charges form an inversion layer electrically interconnecting the n⁺-implanted strips. To achieve a proper strip isolation though, a p⁺-implantation, the p-stop, is usually inserted in between the strips. The properties of this implantation like the concentration or implantation depth influence the final strip isolation. To investigate the isolation capability of the p-stop, field effect transistor (FET) test structures have been designed, measured and simulated using Synopsys TCAD. The main goal of these studies is to relate the threshold voltage of such transistors to the inter-strip resistance of actual sensors. Therewith, extensive measurements of usually large resistances could be transferred to comparable simple ones.

The vacuum control systems of the accelerators complex at CERN are based on PLCs, which communicate with controllers either with direct inputs or outputs, or via PROFIBUS. In order to improve the efficiency of the sector valve controller communication, a low cost PROFIBUS interface card has been designed. This paper presents the developed hardware and firmware, together with the corresponding assessment tests. It flags the improvements of this new interface, in comparison with the former system. Furthermore, this paper can be helpful for any custom design that needs a PROFIBUS interface.

This paper presents the designs and test results of two radiation tolerant 4 × 10 Gb/s vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) array drivers VLAD and lpVLAD, both fabricated in a 1.2 V 65 nm CMOS technology. VLAD adopts a power efficient bandwidth-boost technology, and lpVLAD employs a novel high-efficiency output structure to achieve an ultra-low power consumption of 2.2 mW/Gb/ch with 2 mA bias current and 6 mA modulation current. Both drivers are optically tested passing 10 Gb/s eye mask with all channels active under the radiation of a total dose up to 350 Mrad(SiO₂).

The ATLAS Pixel detector has been equipped with an extra pixel layer in the space obtained by a smaller radius beam pipe. This new pixel layer called the Insertable B-Layer (IBL) was installed in 2014 and is operational in the current ATLAS data taking. The IBL detector is cooled with evaporative CO₂ and is the first of its kind in ATLAS. The ATLAS IBL CO₂ cooling system is designed for lower temperature operation (< −35^oC) than the previous developed CO₂ cooling systems in High Energy Physics experiments. The cold temperatures are required to protect the pixel sensors for the expected high radiation dose received at an integrated luminosity of 550 fb¹. This paper describes the design, development, construction and commissioning of the IBL CO₂ cooling system. It describes the challenges overcome and the important lessons learned for the development of future systems which are now under design for the Phase-II upgrade detectors.

This paper presents a 12.5 Gbps serial link transmitter application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designed in a 65-nm CMOS technology. The ASIC mainly includes an LC-VCO phase-locked-loop (PLL), a 16:1 serializer and a CML driver. Simulation results show that the PLL achieves a 7-to-14 GHz frequency tuning range and an RMS jitter of 0.4 pS. The serializer has a deterministic jitter of 9 pS and a programmable output swing from 200 mV to 1.0 V. The PLL and the serializer consumes 39.6 mW and 73 mW from a 1.2 V power supply, respectively.

X-ray phase contrast imaging arises from changes of the propagation direction of the radiant wave field when traversing the object and it can yield higher contrast for soft tissues than conventional x-ray radiology based on attenuation. Commonly intermediate steps are required to transform wave front modulations into intensity modulations measurable by the detection system. One of these phase contrast techniques is analyzer-based imaging (ABI), which utilizes an analyzer crystal as angular filter with a bandwidth in the micro-radian regime placed between the sample and the detector. Furthermore employing appropriate algorithms, attenuation, refraction and scattering/dark field images can be extracted providing complementary information. The implementation of ABI requires X-ray optics with very high stability and micro-radian resolution. In return, this method possesses an extremely high sensitivity among the phase contrast techniques. At the medical beamline of the Italian synchrotron ELETTRA, a patient room has been implemented in order to perform clinical mammography with free-space propagation phase contrast. In this work we have tested the feasibility of ABI in a preclinical set-up implementing the system in the patient room. High quality images of breast tissues samples are presented and compared to images acquired at a conventional mammography unit. The system has shown excellent stability and imaging performances.

The CBM experiment at FAIR will use GBTX and Versatile Link based readout systems for several of its subdetectors. The paper describes the GBT based readout concept in CBM, emphasizing the common features among systems. Particular choices and features of the readout are motivated mainly by the requirements in the readout of the silicon tracking system (STS). Common developments like a common CBM readout board are presented. The prototype board provides full GBT functionality for all systems, can be interfaced to various prototype readout chains and be refined for later detector specific versions.

Silicon Tracking System (STS), Muon Chamber (MUCH) and Transition Radiation Detector (TRD) subdetectors in the Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) detector system at Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) use the same innovative protocol ensuring reliable synchronization of the communication link between the controller and the front-end ASIC, transmission of time-deterministic commands to the ASIC and efficient readout of data. The paper describes the FPGA-based tester platform which can be used both for the verification of the protocol implementation in a front-end ASIC at the design stage, and for testing of the produced ASICs. Due to its modularity, the platform can be easily adapted for different integrated circuits and readout systems.

Developing front-end electronics to improve charge detection and time resolution in gamma-ray detectors is one of the main tasks to improve performance in new multimodal imaging systems that merge information of Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Gamma Camera or PET tomographs.

The aim of this work is to study the behaviour and to optimize the performance of an ASIC for PET and Gamma Camera applications based on SiPMs detectors. PETIROC2 is a commercial ASIC developed by Weeroc to provide accurate charge and time coincidence resolutions. It has 32 analog input channels that are independently managed. Each channel is divided into two signals, one for time stamping using a TDC and another for charge measurement. In this work, PETIROC2 is evaluated in an experimental setup composed of two pixelated LYSO crystals based detectors, each coupled to a Hamamatsu 4×4 SiPM array. Both detectors are working in coincidence with a separation distance between them that can be modified.

In the present work, an energy resolution of 13.6% FWHM and a time coincidence resolution of 815 ps FWHM have been obtained. These results will be useful to optimize and improve PETIROC2 based PET and Gamma Camera systems.

The SHiP experiment is a new general purpose fixed target experiment proposed at the CERN SPS accelerator. A dedicated beam line in the North Area will be aimed at a fixed target station, followed by a magnetic shield to reduce beam induced background. The experiment will comprise a compact tau neutrino detector and a detector to search for hidden particles. Background rejection is ensured by use of background taggers and a dedicated timing detector. The timing detector will reduce combinatorial di-muon background by requiring incoming particles to be coincident in time within 100 ps. One option for the timing detector consists of columns of horizontal scintillating bars read-out on each end by Silicon Photomultiplier arrays. This study includes characterization of SiPMs from different manufacturers to be used in the timing detector in terms of Current-Voltage behavior, cross-talk probability, dark count rate and single photon timing resolution. Initial results of the time resolution of a EJ-200 scintillating bar read out on both ends by a single SiPM are presented.

Cryogen-free dilution refrigerators are getting popular for rare event searches underground due to their advantages. However, the application of a pulse tube refrigerator introduces mechanical vibration that can translate into temperature fluctuation for calorimeters. The effect is significant in particular when the sensor is attached to a large absorber. A mechanical filter is installed to isolate the calorimeters from the vibration inside a cryogen-free dilution refrigerator while meeting thermal requirements.

The high luminosity LHC (HL-LHC or Phase-II) is expected to increase the instantaneous luminosity of the LHC by a factor of about five, delivering 0∼25 fb ⁻¹ per year between 2025 and 2035. Under these conditions the performance degradation of detectors due to integrated radiation dose/fluence will need to be addressed. The CMS collaboration is planning to upgrade many detector components, including the forward calorimeters. The replacement for the existing endcap preshower, electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters is called the High Granularity Calorimeter (HGCAL) and it will be realized as a sampling calorimeter, including 40 layers of silicon detectors totalling 600 m². The sensors will be realized as pad detectors with cell size between 0.5 and 1.0 cm² and an active thickness between 100 μm and 300 μm depending on their location in the endcaps. The thinner sensors will be used in the highest radiation environment. For an integrated luminosity of 3000 fb ⁻¹, the electromagnetic calorimeter will have to sustain a maximum integrated dose of 1.5 MGy and neutron fluences of 1.0×10¹⁶ n_eq/cm². A tolerance study after neutron irradiation of 300 μm, 200 μm, 100 μm and 50 μm n-on-p and p-on-n silicon pads irradiated to fluences up to 1.6×10¹⁶ n_eq/cm² is presented. The main properties of these diodes have been studied before and after irradiation: leakage current, capacitance, charge collection efficiency with laser and sensitivity to minimum ionizing particles with radioactive source (⁹⁰Sr). The results show a good performance even after the most extreme irradiation.

CUORE is a cryogenic detector that will be operated at LNGS to search for neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) of ¹³⁰Te. The detector installation was completed in summer 2016. Before the installation, several cold runs were done to test the cryogenic system performance. In the last cold run the base temperature of 6.3 mK was reached in stable condition. CUORE-0, a CUORE prototype, has proven the feasibility of CUORE, demonstrating that the target background of 0.01 counts/keV/kg/y and the energy resolution of 5 keV are within reach.

The major LHC upgrade is planned after ten years of accelerator operation. It is foreseen to significantly increase the luminosity of the current machine up to 10³⁵ cm⁻²s⁻¹ and operate as the upcoming High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) . The major detectors upgrade, called the Phase-II Upgrade, is also planned, a main reason being the aging processes caused by severe particle radiation. Within the RD50 Collaboration, a large Research and Development program has been underway to develop silicon sensors with sufficient radiation tolerance for HL-LHC trackers. In this summary, several results obtained during the testing of the devices after irradiation to HL-LHC levels are presented. Among the studied structures, one can find advanced sensors types like 3D silicon detectors, High-Voltage CMOS technologies, or sensors with intrinsic gain (LGAD). Based on these results, the RD50 Collaboration gives recommendation for the silicon detectors to be used in the detector upgrade.

The LHCb experiment will be upgraded during LHC Long Shutdown 2 to be able to record data at a higher instantaneous luminosity. The readout rate is currently limited to 1 MHz by the Level 1 trigger. In order to achieve the target integrated luminosity of 50 fb⁻¹ during LHC Run 3, all subdetectors have to be read out by a 40 MHz trigger-less readout system. Especially, the current tracking detectors downstream of the LHCb dipole magnet suffer from large detector dead times and a small granularity in the Outer Tracker, which consists of proportional straw tubes. Therefore, the Downstream Tracker will be replaced by a Scintillating Fibre Tracker with Silicon Photomultiplier readout. The total sensitive area of 340 m² is made up of 2.5 m long fibre mats consisting of six staggered layers of 250 μm thin scintillating fibres. The scintillation light created by the charged particles traversing the fibre mats is transported to the fibre ends via total internal reflection and detected by state-of-the-art multi-channel SiPM arrays. This paper presents the detector concept, design, challenges, custom-made readout chips, as well as laboratory and beam test results.

The increase in centre-of-mass energy and luminosity of the Large Hadron Collider makes controlling trigger rates with high efficiency challenging. The ATLAS Fast TracKer is a hardware processor built to reconstruct tracks at a rate of up to 100 kHz and provide them to the high level trigger. The tracker reconstructs tracks by matching incoming detector hits with pre-defined track patterns stored in associative memory on custom ASICs. Inner detector hits are fitted to these track patterns using modern FPGAs. This proceeding describe the electronics system used for the massive parallelization performed by the Fast TracKer. An overview of the installation, commissioning and running of the system is given. The ATLAS upgrades planned to enable tracking at the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider are also discussed.

ELI-NP is an European Research Infrastructure that will provide a monochromatic, high brilliance gamma beam with tunable energy up to 19.5 MeV. The time structure of the beam consists of 32 high intensity gamma bunches separated by a time interval of 16 ns and delivered at a repetition rate of 100 Hz. In order to match such unprecedented beam specifications, specific devices and techniques have been developed to measure and monitor the beam parameters during the commissioning and the operational phase. This paper presents an overview of the gamma beam characterization system, with particular focus on a new-concept sampling calorimeter made of silicon detectors and polyethylene absorbers.

A fast non-destructive transverse profile monitor, named PS Beam Gas Ionization monitor (PS- BGI), is under development at CERN for the Proton Synchrotron (PS). This monitor infers the beam profile from the transverse distribution of electrons created by the ionisation of rest gas molecules by the high energy beam particles. The distribution is measured by accelerating the electrons onto an imaging detector based on Timepix3 (TPX3). This detector consists of hybrid pixel detector assemblies mounted on a ceramic carrier board and flexible printed circuit cables which have been developed specifically for operation in an ultra high vacuum environment.

During the HL-LHC era an instantaneous luminosity of 5×10³⁴ cm⁻²s⁻¹ will be reached and possibly 3000 fb⁻¹ integrated luminosity will be delivered. This results in the requirement for a major upgrade of the CMS Outer Tracker detector. This contribution briefly reviews the module types and the front end readout electronics foreseen in the preparation program known as phase 2 upgrade. R&D towards the construction of full module prototypes for the Pixel-Strip (PS) module is ongoing. The module combines a macro-pixel sensor and a strip sensor and has p_T -discrimination capability at module level. The current experience from module construction with a demonstrator assembly and initial laboratory testing with an alternative module concept for the PS-module is shown. A possible calibration method is introduced.

The initial distribution of energy deposition triggered by the interaction of ionizing radiations (far UV and X rays, electron, proton and accelerated ions) with molecular targets or integrated biological systems is often decisive for the spatio-temporal behavior of radiation effects that take place on several orders of magnitude. This contribution deals with an interdisciplinary approach that concerns cutting-edge advances on primary radiation events, considering the potentialities of innovating strategies based on ultrafast laser science, from femtosecond photon sources to laser-driven relativistic particles acceleration. Recent advances of powerful TW laser sources (~ 10¹⁹ Wcm⁻²) and laser-plasma interactions providing ultrashort relativistic particle beams in the energy domain 2.5–150 MeV open exciting opportunities for the development of high-energy radiation femtochemistry (HERF). Early radiation damages being dependent on the survival probability of secondary electrons and radial distribution of short-lived radicals inside ionization clusters, a thorough knowledge of these processes involves the real-time probing of primary events in the temporal range 10⁻¹⁴–10⁻¹¹ s. In the framework of a closed synergy between low-energy radiation femtochemistry (LERF) and the emerging domain of HERF, the paper focuses on early phenomena that occur in the prethermal regime of low-energy secondary electrons, considering very short-lived quantum effects in aqueous environments. A high dose-rate delivered by femtosecond electron beam (~ 10¹¹–10¹³ Gy s⁻¹) can be used to investigate early radiation processes in native ionization tracks, down to 10⁻¹² s and 10⁻⁹ m. We explain how this breakthrough favours the innovating development of real-time nanodosimetry in biologically relevant environments and open new perspectives for spatio-temporal radiation biophysics. The emerging domain of HERF would provide guidance for understanding the specific bioeffects of ultrashort particle bunches. This domain represents also a prerequisite for the control of in vitro and in vivo irradiation at ultrahigh dose-rates or the investigation of ultrafast dose-fractionating phenomena.

A Charge-to-Digital-Converter (QDC) and Time-to-Digital-Converter (TDC) based on a commercial FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) was developed to read out PMT signals of the planned HADES electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL) at GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH (Darmstadt, Germany). The main idea is to convert the charge measurement of a detector signal into a time measurement, where the charge is encoded in the width of a digital pulse, while the arrival time information is encoded in the leading edge time of the pulse. The PaDiWa-AMPS prototype front-end board for the TRB3 (General Purpose Trigger and Readout Board—version 3) which implements this conversion method was developed and qualified. The already well established TRB3 platform provides the needed precise time measurements and serves as a data acquisition system. We present the read-out concept and the performance of the prototype boards in laboratory and also under beam conditions. First steps have been completed in order to adapt this concept to SiPM signals of the hadron calorimeter in the CBM experiment at the planned FAIR facility (Darmstadt).

HOLMES is a new experiment aiming at directly measuring the neutrino mass with a sensitivity below 2 eV . HOLMES will perform a calorimetric measurement of the energy released in the decay of ¹⁶³Ho. The calorimetric measurement eliminates systematic uncertainties arising from the use of external beta sources, as in experiments with spectrometers. This measurement was proposed in 1982 by A. De Rujula and M. Lusignoli, but only recently the detector technological progress has allowed to design a sensitive experiment. HOLMES will deploy a 1000 pixels array of low temperature microcalorimeters with implanted ¹⁶³Ho nuclei. HOLMES, besides being an important step forward in the direct neutrino mass measurement with a calorimetric approach, will also establish the potential of this approach to extend the sensitivity down to 0.1 eV and lower. The detectors used for the HOLMES experiment will be Mo/Cu bilayers TESs (Transition Edge Sensors) on SiN^x membrane with gold absorbers. Microwave multiplexed rf-SQUIDs are the best available technique to read out large array of such detectors. An extensive R&D activity is in progress in order to maximize the multiplexing factor while preserving the performances of the individual detectors. To embed the ¹⁶³Ho into the gold absorbers a custom mass separator ion implanter is being developed. The current activities are focused on the the single detector performances optimization and on the ¹⁶³Ho isotope production and embedding. A preliminary measurement of a sub-array of 4× 16 detectors is planned late in 2017. In this contribution we present the HOLMES project with its technical challenges, its status and perspectives.

IGZO-TFT (Indium Galium Zinc Oxide-Thin Film Transistor) is a promising technology for controlling large display areas and large area sensors because of its very low leakage current in the off state and relatively low cost. IGZO has been used as a switching gate for a large area flat-panel detector. The photon counting capability for X-ray medical imaging has been investigated and expected for low-dose exposure and material determination. Here the design and fabrication of a charge sensitive preamplifier and analog counter using IGZO-TFT processes and its performance are reported for the first time to be used for radiation photon counting applications.

We propose a novel high performance radiation detector and imaging sensor by a ground-breaking core-shell diode array design. This novel core-shell diode array are expected to have superior performance respect to ultrahigh radiation hardness, high sensitivity, low power consumption, fast signal response and high spatial resolution simultaneously. These properties are highly desired in fundamental research such as high energy physics (HEP) at CERN, astronomy and future x-ray based protein crystallography at x-ray free electron laser (XFEL) etc.. This kind of detectors will provide solutions for these fundamental research fields currently limited by instrumentations. In this work, we report our progress on the development of core-shell diode array for the applications as high performance imaging sensors and particle detectors. We mainly present our results in the preparation of high aspect ratio regular silicon rods by metal assisted wet chemical etching technique. Nearly 200 μm deep and 2 μm width channels with high aspect ratio have been etched into silicon. This result will open many applications not only for the core-shell diode array, but also for a high density integration of 3D microelectronics devices.

This paper describes a readout ASIC prototype designed by the CHIPIX65 project, part of RD53, for a pixel detector at HL-LHC . A 64×64 matrix of 50×50μm² pixels is realised. A digital architecture has been developed, with particle efficiency above 99.5% at 3 GHz/cm² pixel rate, trigger frequency of 1 MHz and 12.5μsec latency. Two analog front end designs, one synchronous and one asynchronous, are implemented. Charge is measured with 5-bit precision, analog dead-time below 1%. The chip integrates for the first time many of the components developed by the collaboration in the past, including the Digital-to-Analog converters, Bandgap reference, Serializer, sLVS drivers, and analog Front Ends. Irradiation tests on these components proved their reliability up to 600 Mrad.

Optical and scintillation properties of pure Cs₂HfCl₆ (CHC) single crystals were investigated. In particular, light output and energy resolution were measured using a Si avalanche photodiode (Si-APD), since the Si-APD has sufficient quantum efficiency of around 70 % at emission wavelength region of CHC around 420 nm. This CHC single crystal grown using the vertical Bridgeman method showed light output of 37,000± 2,000 photons/MeV . The FWHM energy resolution was determined to be 3.7± 0.5× (E/662 keV)^{−0.85± 0.03}[%], where E [keV] is the gamma-ray energy. Moreover, the temperature dependence of the light output was stable from −5 to 30 ^oC, while the light output increased below −10 ^oC.

The TTC-PON (Timing, Trigger and Control system based in Passive Optical Networks) was first investigated in 2010 in order to replace the current TTC system, responsible for delivering the bunch clock, trigger and control commands to the LHC experiments. A new prototype of the TTC-PON system is now proposed, overcoming the limitations of the formerly presented solutions. A new upstream data transmission scheme relying on longer bursts is described, together with a high-resolution calibration procedure for aligning bursts in a time division multiplexing access. An error correction scheme for downstream data transmission is also discussed.

The SPIDR (Speedy PIxel Detector Readout) system is a flexible general-purpose readout platform that can be easily adapted to test and characterize new and existing detector readout ASICs. It is originally designed for the readout of pixel ASICs from the Medipix/Timepix family, but other types of ASICs or front-end circuits can be read out as well. The SPIDR system consists of an FPGA board with memory and various communication interfaces, FPGA firmware, CPU subsystem and an API library on the PC . The FPGA firmware can be adapted to read out other ASICs by re-using IP blocks. The available IP blocks include a UDP packet builder, 1 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet MAC's and a "soft core" CPU . Currently the firmware is targeted at the Xilinx VC707 development board and at a custom board called Compact-SPIDR . The firmware can easily be ported to other Xilinx 7 series and ultra scale FPGAs. The gap between an ASIC and the data acquisition back-end is bridged by the SPIDR system. Using the high pin count VITA 57 FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC) connector only a simple chip carrier PCB is required. A 1 and a 10 Gigabit Ethernet interface handle the connection to the back-end. These can be used simultaneously for high-speed data and configuration over separate channels. In addition to the FMC connector, configurable inputs and outputs are available for synchronization with other detectors. A high resolution (≈ 27 ps bin size) Time to Digital converter is provided for time stamping events in the detector. The SPIDR system is frequently used as readout for the Medipix3 and Timepix3 ASICs. Using the 10 Gigabit Ethernet interface it is possible to read out a single chip at full bandwidth or up to 12 chips at a reduced rate. Another recent application is the test-bed for the VeloPix ASIC, which is developed for the Vertex Detector of the LHCb experiment. In this case the SPIDR system processes the 20 Gbps scrambled data stream from the VeloPix and distributes it over four 10 Gigabit Ethernet links, and in addition provides the slow and fast control for the chip.

A Digital RADiation (DRAD) test chip has been specifically designed to study the impact of Total Ionizing Dose (TID) (<1 Grad) and Single Event Upset (SEU) on digital logic gates in a 65 nm CMOS technology. Nine different versions of standard cell libraries are studied in this chip, basically differing in the device dimensions, V_t flavor and layout of the device. Each library has eighteen test structures specifically designed to characterize delay degradation and power consumption of the standard cells. For SEU study, a dedicated test structure based on a shift register is designed for each library. TID results up to 500 Mrad are reported.

HARDROC is the front end chip designed to read out the Resistive Plate Chambers foreseen for the Digital HAdronic CALorimeter (DHCAL) of the future International Linear Collider. The very fine granularity of the calorimeter implies thousands of electronics channels per cubic meter which is a new feature of "imaging" calorimetry. Moreover, for compactness, chips must be embedded inside the detector making crucial the reduction of the power consumption down to 12 μ W per channel. This is achieved using power-pulsing and online zero-suppression. Around 800 HARDROC3 were produced in 2015. The overall performance and production tests will be detailed.

The PADME (Positron Annihilation Dark Matter Experiment) collaboration searches for a dark mediator produced in positron-electron annihilation by using a relatively simple apparatus and the existing positron beam of the Beam Test Facility at Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati. The experiment could detect dark photons decaying in visible and invisible channels by using the missing mass reconstruction technique. This is accomplished by an excellent electromagnetic calorimeter, a thin diamond active target, and a system of efficient veto detectors to strongly reduce the background. Without major upgrades on the beam line, the sensitivity range on the coupling is expected to be  ≳  10⁻³ for a dark mediator mass of m_A'≤23.7 MeV/c² after six months of running, which are planned for 2018. In this region of the parameter space, dark photons could account for the difference between the measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon (g-2)_μ and the Standard Model prediction.

The PADME (Positron Annihilation into Dark Mediator Experiment) collaboration searches for dark photons produced in the annihilation e⁺+e^-→γ+A' of accelerated positrons with atomic electrons of a fixed target at the Beam Test Facility of Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati. The apparatus can detect dark photons decaying into visible A'→e⁺e^- and invisible A'→χχ channels, where χ's are particles of a secluded sector weakly interacting and therefore undetected. In order to improve the missing mass resolution and to measure the beam flux, PADME has an active target able to reconstruct the beam spot position and the bunch multiplicity. In this work the active target is described, which is made of a detector grade polycrystalline synthetic diamond with strip electrodes on both surfaces. The electrodes segmentation allows to measure the beam profile along X and Y and evaluate the average beam position bunch per bunch. The results of beam tests for the first two diamond detector prototypes are shown. One of them holds innovative graphitic electrodes built with a custom process developed in the laboratory, and the other one with commercially available traditional Cr-Au electrodes. The front-end electronics used in the test beam is discussed and the performance observed is presented. Finally, the final design of the target to be realized at the beginning of 2017 to be ready for data taking in 2018 is illustrated.

One of the goals of the Cryogenic Magnetic Detector at Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics SB RAS (Novosibirsk, Russia) is a study of hadron production in electron-positron collisions near threshold. The neutron-antineutron pair production events can be detected only by the calorimeters. In the barrel calorimeter the antineutron annihilation typically occurs about 5 ns or later after the beams crossing. For identification of such events it is necessary to measure the time of flight of particles to the LXe-calorimeter with an accuracy of about a few nanoseconds. The LXe-calorimeter consists of 14 layers of ionization chambers with two readout: anode and cathode. The duration of charge collection to the anodes is about 4.5 μs, while the required accuracy of measuring of the signal arrival time is less than 1/1000 of that (i.e. 4.5 ns). Besides, the signals' shapes differ substantially from event to event, so the signal arrival time is measured in two stages. In the paper we describ the development of the special electronics which performs waveform digitization and the on-line measurement of signals' arrival times and amplitudes.

In the last 40 years, in the field of Molecular Medicine imaging there has been a huge growth in the employment and in the improvement of detectors for PET and SPECT applications in order to reach accurate diagnosis of the diseases. The most important feature required to these detectors is an high quality of images that is usually obtained benefitting from the development of a wide number of new scintillation crystals with high imaging performances. In this contest, features like high detection efficiency, short decay time, great spectral match with photodetectors, absence of afterglow and low costs are surely attractive. However, there are other factors playing an important role in the realization of high quality images such as energy and spatial resolutions, position linearity and contrast resolution. With the aim to realize an high performace gamma ray detector for PET and SPECT applications, this work is focused on the evaluation of the imaging characteristics of a recently developed scintillation crystal, CRY019.

The pixel tracker of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment is the innermost sub-detector, located close to the collision point, and is used for reconstruction of the tracks and vertices of charged particles. The present pixel detector was designed to work efficiently with the maximum instantaneous luminosity of 1 × 10³⁴ cm⁻² s⁻¹. In 2017 the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is expected to deliver a peak luminosity reaching up to 2 × 10³⁴ cm⁻² s⁻¹, increasing the mean number of primary vertices to 50. Due to the radiation damage and significant data losses due to high occupancy in the readout chip of the pixel detector, the present system must be replaced by a new one in an extended end-of-year shutdown during winter 2016/2017 in order to maintain the excellent tracking and other physics performances. The main new features of the upgraded pixel detector are a ultra-light mechanical design with four barrel layers and three end-cap disks, digital readout chip with higher rate capability and a new cooling system. In this document, we discuss the motivations for the upgrade, the design, and technological choices made, the status of the construction of the new detector and the future plans for the installation and commissioning.

In mammography the difficult task to detect microcalcifications (≈ 100 μm) and low contrast structures in the breast has been a topic of interest from its beginnings. The possibility to improve the image quality requires the effort to employ novel X-ray imaging techniques, such as phase-contrast, and high resolution detectors. Phase-contrast techniques are promising tools for medical diagnosis because they provide additional and complementary information to traditional absorption-based X-ray imaging methods. In this work a Hamamatsu microfocus X-ray source with tungsten anode and a photon counting detector (Timepix operated in Medipix mode) was used. A significant improvement in the detection of phase-effects using Medipix detector was observed in comparison to an standard flat-panel detector. An optimization of geometrical parameters reveals the dependency on the X-ray propagation path and the small angle deviation. The quantification of these effects was achieved taking into account the image noise, contrast, spatial resolution of the phase-enhancement, absorbed dose, and energy dependence.

The LHCb Experiment is designed for precision measurements of CP violation and rare decays of beauty and charm hadrons. The experiment will be upgraded to a trigger-less system reading out the full detector at a 40 MHz event rate with all selection algorithms executed in a CPU farm. The upgraded Vertex Locator will be a hybrid pixel detector read out by the VeloPix ASIC with on-chip zero-suppression. The overview of the system and the design of the VELO on-detector electronics that include the front-end hybrid, the opto-conversion and power distribution boards will be summarised. The results from the evaluation of these prototypes and further enhancement techniques will be discussed.

This paper describes the status of the developments made by ATLAS HVCMOS and HVMAPS collaborations. We have proposed two HVCMOS sensor concepts for ATLAS pixels—the capacitive coupled pixel detector (CCPD) and the monolithic detector. The sensors have been implemented in three semiconductor processes AMS H18, AMS H35 and LFoundry LFA15. Efficiency of 99.7% after neutron irradiation to 10¹⁵ n_eq/cm²W has been measured with the small area CCPD prototype in AMS H18 technology. About 84% of the particles are detected with a time resolution better than 25 ns. The sensor was implemented on a low resistivity substrate. The large area demonstrator sensor in AMS H35 process has been designed, produced and successfully tested. The sensor has been produced on different high resistivity substrates ranging from 80 Ωcm to more than 1 kΩ. Monolithic- and hybrid readout are both possible. In August 2016, six different monolithic pixel matrices for ATLAS with a total area of 1 cm² have been submitted in LFoundry LFA15 process. The matrices implement column drain and triggered readout as well as waveform sampling capability on pixel level. Design details will be presented.

The CMS tracker upgrade for the HL-LHC relies on different module types, depending on the position of the respective module. They are built with high-density interconnection flexible circuits that are wire bonded to silicon strip and pixel-strip sensors. The Front-End hybrids will contain several flip-chip bonded readout ASICs that are still under development. Mock-up prototypes are used to qualify the advanced flexible circuit technology and the parameters of the hybrids. This paper presents the Pixel-Strip (PS) mock-up hybrid in terms of testing, interconnection, fold-over, thermal properties and layout feasibility. Plans for circuit testing at operating temperature (-30^o) are also presented.

We developed Time-over-Threshold based digital PET (TODPET2) tomograph using silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) arrays coupled with pixelized Ce:Gd₃(Ga, Al)₅O₁₂ (Ce:GAGG) scintillators dedicated for non-invasive measurement of blood RI concentrations. The detector consists of 1.57 × 1.57 mm² SiPM chips and 1.6 × 1.6 × 15 mm³ Ce:GAGG scintillators arranged on a 12 × 12 channel, both working as individual readout systems. After the development of the detector, we fabricated the PET gantry composed of 8 pieces of SiPM/Ce:GAGG detector array which signals were sent to the current-comparing type time-over-threshold (TOT) ASIC for individual readout of pixels. The PET scanner which we developed has 25 mm axial field-of-view (FOV) and 60 mm transaxial FOV. The spatial resolution reconstructed with maximum likelihood estimation method (MLEM) is 0.98 mm (FWHM) at the center of FOV. The sensitivity of the system is measured to be 1.31% using ²²Na point source. Finally, timing response to changes in RI concentration was also measured using 5 mm diameter syringe injected with several concentrations of 18FDG.

The NA62 experiment at CERN is aimed at measuring the ultra-rare decay K⁺→ π⁺ν  with 10% accuracy. Since the branching fraction of this decay is O(10⁻¹⁰), the detector must be able to suppress background events with branching ratios up to 10 orders of magnitude higher than the signal. In order to achieve this goal a set of modern detector systems has been designed and built. Among them is a low mass (∼ 1.8% X₀) spectrometer to detect charged kaon decay products. The spectrometer contains 7168 straw tubes operating in vacuum. The detector was successfully installed and commissioned in 2014–2015. The goal of this report is to give a general overview of the system. The track time resolution obtained from reconstructed data is also described.

The CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is upgrading the photo-detection and readout system of the forward hadronic calorimeter. The phase 1 upgrade of the CMS forward calorimeter requires the replacement of the current photomultiplier tubes, as well as the installation of a new front-end readout system. The new photomultiplier tubes contain a thinner window as well as multi-anode readout. The front-end electronics will use the QIE10 ASIC which combines signal digitization with timing information. The major components of the upgrade as well as the current status are described in this paper.

Laser-accelerated ion beams could represent the future of particle acceleration in several multidisciplinary applications, as for instance medical physics, hadrontherapy and imaging field, being a concrete alternative to old paradigm of acceleration, characterized by huge and complex machines. In this framework, following on from the ELIMED collaboration, launched in 2012 between INFN-LNS and ELI-Beamlines, in 2014 a three-years contract has been signed between the two institutions for the design and the development of a complete transport beam-line for high-energy ion beams (up to 60 MeV) coupled with innovative diagnostics and in-air dosimetry devices. The beam-line will be installed at the ELI-Beamlines facility and will be available for users. The measurement of the beam characteristics, such as energy spectra, angular distributions and dose-rate is mandatory to optimize the transport as well as the beam delivery at the irradiation point. In order to achieve this purpose, the development of appropriate on-line diagnostics devices capable to detect high-pulsed beams with high accuracy, represents a crucial point in the ELIMED beamline development. The diagnostics solution, based on the use of silicon carbide (SiC) and diamond detectors using TOF technique, will be presented together with the preliminary results obtained with laser-accelerated proton beams.

The MEG II Timing Counter will measure the positron time of arrival with a resolution of 30 ps relying on two arrays of scintillator pixels read out by 6144 Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) from AdvanSiD. They must be characterized, measuring their breakdown voltage, to assure that the gains of the SiPMs of each pixel are as uniform as possible, to maximize the pixel resolution. To do this an automatic test system that can measure sequentially the parameters of 32 devices has been developed.

The MEG experiment has been searching for the lepton flavor violating process, μ⁺ arrow e⁺γ, which is a clear evidence of new physics models beyond the Standard Model. The upgrade experiment (MEG II) is currently being prepared to obtain one order higher branching ratio sensitivity ℬ < 5.0 × 10⁻¹⁴ by using the world's most intense muon beam up to ∼10⁸ μ⁺/s and upgraded detectors with considerably improved performance. One of the keys for the upgrade is to suppress the background rate which is significantly increased with the higher muon decay rate. In the MEG II experiment, the Radiative Decay Counter (RDC) will be newly introduced for active background identification. The RDC is able to identify the most dominant background due to photons from Radiative Muon Decay and improve the sensitivity by 22%. In this paper, the concept of the RDC and its development are described.

The Mu2e calorimeter is composed of 1400 un-doped CsI crystals, coupled to large area UV extended Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs), arranged in two annular disks. This calorimeter has to provide precise information on energy, timing and position resolutions. It should also be fast enough to handle the high rate background and it must operate and survive in the high radiation environment. Simulation studies estimated that, in the highest irradiated regions, each photo-sensor will absorb a dose of 20 krad and will be exposed to a neutron fluency of 5.5×10¹¹n1 MeV/cm² in three years of running, with a safety factor of 3 included. At the end of 2015, we have concluded an irradiation campaign at the Frascati Neutron Generator (FNG, Frascati, Italy) measuring the response of two different 16 array models from Hamamatsu, which differ for the protection windows and a SiPM from FBK. In 2016, we have carried out two additional irradiation campaigns with neutrons and photons at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR, Dresden, Germany) and at the Calliope gamma irradiation facility at ENEA-Casaccia, respectively. A negligible increment of the leakage current and no gain change have been observed with the dose irradiation. On the other hand, at the end of the neutron irradiation, the gain does not show large changes whilst the leakage current increases by around a factor of 2000. In these conditions, the too high leakage current makes problematic to bias the SiPMs, thus requiring to cool them down to a running temperature of ∼0^oC.

Immunity against possible random discharges inside active detector volume of MPGDs is one of the key aspects that should be addressed in the design of the front-end electronics. This issue becomes particularly critical for systems with high channel counts and high density readout employing the front-end electronics built as multichannel ASICs implemented in modern CMOS technologies, for which the breakdown voltages are in the range of a few Volts. The paper presents the design of various input protection structures integrated in the ASIC manufactured in a 350 nm CMOS process and test results using an electrical circuit to mimic discharges in the detectors.

The Versatile Link Demonstrator Board (VLDB) is the evaluation kit for the radiation-hard Optical Link ecosystem, which provides a 4.8 Gbps data transfer link for communication between front-end (FE) and back-end (BE) of the High Energy Physics experiments. It gathers the Versatile link main radiation-hard custom Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and modules: GBTx, GBT-SCA and VTRx/VTTx plus the FeastMP, a radiation-hard in-house designed DC-DC converter. This board is the first design allowing system-level tests of the Link with a complete interconnection of the constitutive components, allowing data acquisition, control and monitoring of FE devices with the GBT-SCA pair.

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.

This paper presents a 10-bit 250-MS/s time-interleaved pipelined analog-to-digital data converter (ADC). A distributed clocking scheme is developed to eliminate timing skew between channels without introducing load capacitance to the driving buffer of the ADC. The channel offset and gain mismatch errors are calibrated in digital domain. In addition, a switch-embedded opamp-sharing technique is developed to reduce the ADC power consumption and eliminate the memory effect. The simulated SNDR and SFDR are 61.84 dB and 78.2 dB, respectively. The ADC core consumes 28 mW under a 1.8 V supply at 250 MS/s sampling rate.

A dedicated power analysis methodology, based on modern digital design tools and integrated with the VEPIX53 simulation framework developed within RD53 collaboration, is being used to guide vital choices for the design and optimization of the next generation ATLAS and CMS pixel chips and their critical serial powering circuit (shunt-LDO). Power consumption is studied at different stages of the design flow under different operating conditions. Significant effort is put into extensive investigations of dynamic power variations in relation with the decoupling seen by the powering network. Shunt-LDO simulations are also reported to prove the reliability at the system level.

Previous works onchromium compensated gallium arsenide (GaAs:Cr) have shown high efficiency, good spatial and energy resolution, which is obviously connected with the high quality of material itself. The purpose of this research was to aggravate the diffusion process by increasing the annealing temperature and to observe whether there will be any degradation of material characteristics. The investigation of three 3-inch GaAs:Cr wafers with different annealing temperature of chromium was carried out. Resistivity and mobility-lifetime measurements were made using pad sensors made of these wafers. The I-V curves were built to estimate the resistivity across the wafer. Furthermore charge collection efficiency (CCE) measurements were carried out in order to estimate the μ_eτ _e product of GaAs:Cr. The resistivity mapping has showed a variation of resistivity across the wafer in the range from 1.25 × 10⁹ to 5.5 × 10⁸ Ohm cm. Although the third wafer showed quite good uniformity, the resistance didn't reached values higher than 3.5 × 10⁸ Ohm cm. In spite of harsh diffusion conditions all the materials showed quite good CCE (about 90%) and μ _eτ_e more than 5 × 10⁻⁵ cm²/V. Also a strong dependency between the resistivity and mobility-lifetime product was found only for one wafer. So the uniformity of μ_eτ _e product across the wafer can be stated independently of resistivity. More detailed information and discussion of experimental results is presented in the article.

Firmware for FPGA trigger applications at the CMS experiment is conventionally written using hardware description languages such as Verilog and VHDL. MaxCompiler is an alternative, Java based, tool for developing FPGA applications which uses a higher level of abstraction from the hardware than a hardware description language. An implementation of the jet and energy sum algorithms for the CMS Level-1 calorimeter trigger has been written using MaxCompiler to benchmark against the VHDL implementation in terms of accuracy, latency, resource usage, and code size. A Kalman Filter track fitting algorithm has been developed using MaxCompiler for a proposed CMS Level-1 track trigger for the High-Luminosity LHC upgrade. The design achieves a low resource usage, and has a latency of 187.5 ns per iteration.

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) employs a sophisticated two-level online triggering system that has a rejection factor of up to 10⁵. Since the beginning of Run II of LHC, the conditions that CMS operates in have become increasingly challenging. The centre-of-mass energy is now 13 TeV and the instantaneous luminosity currently peaks at 1.5 ×10³⁴ cm⁻²s⁻¹. In order to keep low physics thresholds and to trigger efficiently in such conditions, the CMS trigger system has been upgraded. A new trigger architecture, the Time Multiplexed Trigger (TMT) has been introduced which allows the full granularity of the calorimeters to be exploited at the first level of the online trigger. The new trigger has also benefited immensely from technological improvements in hardware. Sophisticated algorithms, developed to fully exploit the advantages provided by the new hardware architecture, have been implemented. The new trigger system started taking physics data in 2016 following a commissioning period in 2015, and since then has performed extremely well. The hardware and firmware developments, electron and photon algorithms together with their performance in challenging 2016 conditions is presented.

Space based MeV range gamma rays have been largely unexplored due to the difficulty associated with the measurements; however they address a broad range of astrophysical questions, including indirect searches for dark matter. To address these challenges and yet have compact instruments, the next generation experiments would need detectors with high efficiency, high stopping power, excellent energy resolution, and excellent angular resolution. Fast and bright crystal scintillators coupled to compact photo-detectors are an ideal option. In this work we have investigated the LYSO and CeBr3 crystal scintillators because of their high light yield, fast decay time, and small radiation length. We have used the silicon photomultiplier arrays as photo-detectors because of their small size, simple readout, low voltage operation, and immunity to magnetic fields. We studied the gamma rays response for the 1.6 cm × 1.6 cm × 4.0 cm LYSO crystals and a 1.3 cm × 1.3 cm × 1.3 cm CeBr3 crystal readout by 4 × 4 SensL arrays (ArrayC30035). The crystal self-absorption and timing resolution have been examined along with linearity and energy resolution. The DRS4 evaluation board was used for acquisition of the events.

The SoLid collaboration have developed an intelligent readout system to reduce their 3200 silicon photomultiplier detector's data rate by a factor of 10000 whilst maintaining high efficiency for storing data from anti-neutrino interactions. The system employs an FPGA-level waveform characterisation to trigger on neutron signals. Following a trigger, data from a space-time region of interest around the neutron will be read out using the IPbus protocol. In these proceedings the design of the readout system is explained and results showing the performance of a prototype version of the system are presented.

The ATLAS Inner Detector will be replaced for the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) running in 2026. The new Inner Detector is called the Inner Tracker (ITk). The ITk will cover an extended η-range: at least to |η|<3.2, and likely up to 0|η|<4.. The ITk will be an all-Silicon based detector, consisting of a Silicon strip detector outside of a radius of 362 mm, and a Silicon pixel detector inside of this radius. Several novel designs are being considered for the ITk pixel detector, to cope with high-eta charged particle tracks. These designs are grouped into `extended' and `inclined' design-types. Extended designs have long pixel staves with sensors parallel to the beamline, while inclined designs have sensors angled such that they point towards the interaction point. The relative advantages and challenges of these two classes of designs will be examined in this paper, along with the mechanical solutions being considered. Thermal management, radiation-length mapping, and electrical services will also be discussed.

There are numerous applications for which is advantageous to obtain X-ray transmission data necessary for 3D computed tomography (CT) within seconds or faster. The required high frame rates for data acquisition became available during the last decade due to intensive synchrotron radiation sources together with appropriate X-ray imaging detectors. It will be shown in this work that sub-second recording of the full CT data set can be reached even in laboratory conditions employing high power microfocus tubes together with a semiconductor pixelated detector. As an example, bubbles nucleation and evolution during dissolving of a pill in the water, releasing carbon dioxide will be shown in 3D with 2 Hz time resolution.

The upgrade of the ALICE Inner Tracking System is based on a Monolithic Active Pixel Sensor and ASIC designed in a CMOS 0.18 μ m process. In order to provide the required output bandwidth (1.2 Gb/s for the inner layers and 400 Mb/s for the outer ones) on a single high speed serial link, a custom Data Transmission Unit (DTU) has been developed in the same process. The DTU includes a clock multiplier PLL, a double data rate serializer and a pseudo-LVDS driver with pre-emphasis and is designed to be SEU tolerant.

Muography techniques applied to geological structures greatly improved in the past ten years. Recent applications demonstrate the interest of the method not only to perform structural imaging but also to monitor the dynamics of inner movements like magma ascent inside volcanoes or density variations in hydrothermal systems. Muography time-resolution has been studied thanks to dedicated experiments, e.g. in a water tower tank. This paper presents the activities of the DIAPHANE collaboration between particle- and geo-physicists and the most recent results obtained in the field of volcanology, with a focus on the main target, the Soufrière of Guadeloupe active volcano. Special emphasis is given on the monitoring of the dome's inner volumes opacity variations, that could be ascribed to the hydrothermal system dynamics (vaporization of inner liquid water in coincidence with the appearance of new fumaroles at the summit). I also briefly present results obtained in the fields of civil engineering (study of urban underground tunnels) and archaelogy (greek tumulus scanning).

SALT is a new 128-channel readout ASIC for silicon strip detectors in the upgraded Upstream Tracker of the LHCb experiment. It will extract and digitise analogue signals from the sensor, perform digital processing and transmit serial output data. SALT is designed in CMOS 130 nm process and uses a novel architecture comprising of an analogue front-end and an ultra-low power (<0.5 mW) fast (40 MSps) sampling 6-bit ADC in each channel. An 8-channel prototype (SALT8), comprising all important functionalities was designed, fabricated and tested. A full 128-channel version was also submitted. The design and test results of the SALT8 prototype are presented showing its full functionality.

We present the ARAGORN front-end, a cost-optimized, high-density Time-to-Digital Converter platform. Four Xilinx Artix-7 FPGAs implement 384 channels with an average time resolution of 165 ps on a single module. A fifth FPGA acts as data concentrator and generic board master. The front-end features a SFP+ transceiver for data output and an optional multi-channel optical transceiver slot to interconnect with up to seven boards though a star topology. This novel approach makes it possible to read out up to eight boards yielding 3072 input channels via a single optical fiber at a bandwidth of 6.6 Gb/s.

TORCH (Time Of internally Reflected CHerenkov light) is a novel time-of-flight detector, designed to provide π /K/p particle identification up to 0∼ 1 GeV/c momentum and beyond. To achieve this, a time resolution of ∼ 15 ps combining information from 0∼ 3 detected photons is required over a 10 m flight path. Large areas can be covered with TORCH, nominally up to 30 m². One such application is for the LHCb experiment, to complement the particle identification capabilities of its RICH detectors. TORCH has a DIRC-like construction with 10 mm-thick synthetic amorphous fused-silica plates as a radiator. Cherenkov photons propagate by total internal reflection to the plate edges and there are focussed onto an array of position-sensitive photodetectors. Custom-built micro-channel plate photo-multipliers (MCP-PMTs) are being developed in collaboration with industry to provide the lifetime, granularity and time resolution to meet the TORCH specifications. In the present paper, laboratory tests of the MCP-PMTs developed for TORCH and its readout electronics are presented. Test beam measurements of a prototype TORCH detector in a low-momentum mixed beam of pions and protons are highlighted. Time resolutions for individual photons approaching 100 ps is achieved, after correction for dispersion effects in the quartz medium. In addition to the particle identification capabilities, the high-precision timing information that TORCH provides could be used at the high-luminosity LHC to associate high-energy photons with the correct primary interaction vertex amongst the many expected.

We have developed monolithic CMOS pixel sensor using fully-depleted (FD) silicon-on-insulator (SOI) pixel process technology. The SOI substrates consist of high-resistivity silicon with p-n junctions and low-resistivity silicon layers for forming SOI-CMOS circuitry. Tungsten vias are used to make connections between p-n junctions in the silicon substrate and the first metal layers in the top-layer circuitry. Using this sensor construction, high sensor gain in small pixel areas can be achieved. In 2014, a high-resolution, integrated SOI pixel sensor, called INTPIX8, was developed with two types of substrates: a float-zone, p-type layer on a single SOI (SSOI) wafer and a Czochralski, p-type layer on a double SOI (DSOI) wafer. The X-ray spectra were obtained using Am-241 radiation source. The SSOI-based and DSOI-based sensors exhibited different levels of sensor gain and there were no large differences in the noise levels between them.

This paper presents the results of an irradiation study on single transistors manufactured in a 28 nm high-k commercial CMOS technology up to 1 Grad. Both nMOSFET and pMOSFET transistors have been irradiated and electrical parameters have been measured. For nMOSFETs, the leakage current shows an increase of 2–3 orders of magnitude, while only moderate degradation for other parameters has been observed. For pMOSFETs, a more severe degradation of parameters has been measured, especially in the drain current. This work is relevant as the evaluation of a new generation of CMOS technologies to be used in future HEP experiments.

High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments have unique requirements for data communication. High data speeds, combined with extreme restrictions on materials allowed, leads to custom transmission lines. This paper will present transmission line design theory, simulation and testing methods. Transmission line designs options like flexes and rigid PCBs as well as cables will be studied. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software packages simulate energy dissipation and quality of transmitted signals. The characterisation techniques of time-domain reflectometry and frequency-domain measurements are discussed and compared. Bit-error-rate testing is presented and its limitations for design discussed. Methods to improve quality, like three different types of equalization are described.

A loss of vacuum in a vessel, containing or not dust, is the typical case study considered in the STARDUST-UPGRADE facility of the Quantum Electronics and Plasma Group of the university of Rome Tor Vergata. This kind of accident was simulated numerically, without including the presence of dust, for two mass flow rates and three different inlet ports (C, E and F). Numerical settings are explained and the results obtained in each case are shown and discussed. At the end of the work, conclusions about what seen and further foreseen developments of this research are presented.

This study investigates two proposed labyrinth layouts for Iranian Light Source Facility from shielding viewpoint: three and five-legged labyrinths. The attenuation of photons and neutrons along the labyrinth is studied by using FLUKA Monte Carlo code and compared with the most common analytical formulas and reliability of each method is judged. Finally, the labyrinth layout that meets our shielding design goal, is introduced.

A compact, remote controlled, cost efficient diagnostic station has been developed to measure the charge, the profile and the emittance for low energy proton beams. It has been installed and tested in the proton beam line of the Project Prometheus at SANAEM of the Turkish Atomic Energy Authority.

A Radio Frequency Quadrupole (RFQ) linac delivering 800 keV, 5 mA protons has been designed. It is envisaged as first injector of the proton driver that will be used for production of proton-rich radioactive beams in the proposed ANURIB facility. The option of rod-type structure at frequency of 80 MHz has been chosen owing to ease of mechanical fabrications and to avoid detrimental nearby dipole modes present in vane type structure. Optimization of parameters has been carried out for a viable length and power of RFQ in order to avoid any infrastructural complexity. Conventional method of keeping focusing factor and vane voltage constant along the length of RFQ has been adopted. Results of detailed beam dynamics and RF structure design, space charge induced effects and corroborative particle tracking with realistic 3D fields of modulated vane has been presented.

The combination of a magnetic spectrometer and ancillary detectors such as silicon detectors is a powerful tool for the study of nuclear reactions and nuclear structure. This paper discusses the recently commissioned silicon array called the "CAKE" which is designed for use with the K600 magnetic spectrometer at iThemba LABS.

A possibility of a compact powerful point-like neutron source creation is discussed. Neutron yield of the source based on deuterium-deuterium (D-D) reaction is estimated at the level of 10¹¹ s⁻¹ (10¹³ s⁻¹ for deuterium-tritium reaction). The fusion takes place due to bombardment of deuterium- (or tritium) loaded target by high-current focused deuterium ion beam with energy of 100 keV. The ion beam is formed by means of high-current quasi-gasdynamic ion source of a new generation based on an electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) discharge in an open magnetic trap sustained by powerful microwave radiation. The prospects of proposed generator for neutron tomography are discussed. Suggested method is compared to the point-like neutron sources based on a spark produced by powerful femtosecond laser pulses.

We discuss an in-situ evaluation of the ⁸⁵Kr, ²²²Rn, and ²²⁰Rn background in PandaX-I, a 120-kg liquid xenon dark matter direct detection experiment. Combining with a simulation, their contributions to the low energy electron-recoil background in the dark matter search region are obtained.

In this study, we aimed to develop a GATE model for the simulation of Ray-Scan 64 PET scanner and model its performance characteristics. A detailed implementation of system geometry and physical process were included in the simulation model. Then we modeled the performance characteristics of Ray-Scan 64 PET system for the first time, based on National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) NU-2 2007 protocols and validated the model against experimental measurement, including spatial resolution, sensitivity, counting rates and noise equivalent count rate (NECR). Moreover, an accurate dead time module was investigated to simulate the counting rate performance. Overall results showed reasonable agreement between simulation and experimental data. The validation results showed the reliability and feasibility of the GATE model to evaluate major performance of Ray-Scan 64 PET system. It provided a useful tool for a wide range of research applications.

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