|
Gomez-Cadenas, J. J., Benlloch-Rodriguez, J. M., & Ferrario, P. (2017). Monte Carlo study of the coincidence resolving time of a liquid xenon PET scanner, using Cherenkov radiation. J. Instrum., 12, P08023–13pp.
Abstract: In this paper we use detailed Monte Carlo simulations to demonstrate that liquid xenon (LXe) can be used to build a Cherenkov-based TOF-PET, with an intrinsic coincidence resolving time (CRT) in the vicinity of 10 ps. This extraordinary performance is due to three facts: a) the abundant emission of Cherenkov photons by liquid xenon; b) the fact that LXe is transparent to Cherenkov light; and c) the fact that the fastest photons in LXe have wavelengths higher than 300 nm, therefore making it possible to separate the detection of scintillation and Cherenkov light. The CRT in a Cherenkov LXe TOF-PET detector is, therefore, dominated by the resolution (time jitter) introduced by the photosensors and the electronics. However, we show that for sufficiently fast photosensors (e.g, an overall 40 ps jitter, which can be achieved by current micro-channel plate photomultipliers) the overall CRT varies between 30 and 55 ps, depending on the detection efficiency. This is still one order of magnitude better than commercial CRT devices and improves by a factor 3 the best CRT obtained with small laboratory prototypes.
|
|
|
Gololo, M. G. D., Carrio Argos, F., & Mellado, B. (2022). Tile Computer-on-Module for the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter Phase-II upgrades. J. Instrum., 17(6), P06020–14pp.
Abstract: The Tile PreProcessor (TilePPr) is the core element of the Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) off-detector electronics for High-luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). The TilePPr comprises FPGA-based boards to operate and read out the TileCal on-detector electronics. The Tile Computer on Module (TileCoM) mezzanine is embedded within TilePPr to carry out three main functionalities. These include remote configuration of on-detector electronics and TilePPr FPGAs, interface the TilePPr with the ATLAS Trigger and Data Acquisition (TDAQ) system, and interfacing the TilePPr with the ATLAS Detector Control System (DCS) by providing monitoring data. The TileCoM is a 10-layer board with a Zynq UltraScale+ ZU2CG for processing data, interface components to integrate with TilePPr and the power supply to be connected to the Advanced Telecommunication Computing Architecture carrier. A CentOS embedded Linux is deployed on the TileCoM to implement the required functionalities for the HL-LHC. In this paper we present the hardware and firmware developments of the TileCoM system in terms of remote programming, interface with ATLAS TDAQ system and DCS system.
|
|
|
Garonna, A., Amaldi, U., Bonomi, R., Campo, D., Degiovanni, A., Garlasche, M., et al. (2010). Cyclinac medical accelerators using pulsed C6+/H-2(+) ion sources. J. Instrum., 5, C09004–19pp.
Abstract: Charged particle therapy, or so-called hadrontherapy, is developing very rapidly. There is large pressure on the scientific community to deliver dedicated accelerators, providing the best possible treatment modalities at the lowest cost. In this context, the Italian research Foundation TERA is developing fast-cycling accelerators, dubbed 'cyclinacs'. These are a combination of a cyclotron (accelerating ions to a fixed initial energy) followed by a high gradient linac boosting the ions energy up to the maximum needed for medical therapy. The linac is powered by many independently controlled klystrons to vary the beam energy from one pulse to the next. This accelerator is best suited to treat moving organs with a 4D multipainting spot scanning technique. A dual proton/carbon ion cyclinac is here presented. It consists of an Electron Beam Ion Source, a superconducting isochronous cyclotron and a high-gradient linac. All these machines are pulsed at high repetition rate (100-400 Hz). The source should deliver both C6+ and H-2(+) ions in short pulses (1.5 μs flat-top) and with sufficient intensity (at least 10(8) fully stripped carbon ions per pulse at 300 Hz). The cyclotron accelerates the ions to 120 MeV/u. It features a compact design (with superconducting coils) and a low power consumption. The linac has a novel C-band high-gradient structure and accelerates the ions to variable energies up to 400 MeV/u. High RF frequencies lead to power consumptions which are much lower than the ones of synchrotrons for the same ion extraction energy. This work is part of a collaboration with the CLIC group, which is working at CERN on high-gradient electron-positron colliders.
|
|
|
Garcia, A. R., Martinez, T., Cano-Ott, D., Castilla, J., Guerrero, C., Marin, J., et al. (2012). MONSTER: a time of flight spectrometer for beta-delayed neutron emission measurements. J. Instrum., 7, C05012–12pp.
Abstract: The knowledge of the beta-decay properties of nuclei contributes decisively to our understanding of nuclear phenomena: the beta-delayed neutron emission of neutron rich nuclei plays an important role in the nucleosynthesis r-process and constitutes a probe for nuclear structure of very neutron rich nuclei providing information about the high energy part of the full beta strength (S-beta) function. In addition, beta-delayed neutrons are essential for the control and safety of nuclear reactors. In order to determine the neutron energy spectra and emission probabilities from neutron precursors a MOdular Neutron time-of-flight SpectromeTER (MONSTER) has been proposed for the DESPEC experiment at the future FAIR facility. The design of MONSTER and status of its construction are reported in this work.
|
|
|
Fernandes, L. M. P., Freitas, E. D. C., Ball, M., Gomez-Cadenas, J. J., Monteiro, C. M. B., Yahlali, N., et al. (2010). Primary and secondary scintillation measurements in a Xenon Gas Proportional Scintillation Counter. J. Instrum., 5, P09006–15pp.
Abstract: NEXT is a new experiment to search for neutrinoless double beta decay using a 100 kg radio-pure high-pressure gaseous xenon TPC. The detector requires excellent energy resolution, which can be achieved in a Xe TPC with electroluminescence readout. Hamamatsu R8520-06SEL photomultipliers are good candidates for the scintillation readout. The performance of this photomultiplier, used as VUV photosensor in a gas proportional scintillation counter, was investigated. Initial results for the detection of primary and secondary scintillation produced as a result of the interaction of 5.9 keV X-rays in gaseous xenon, at room temperature and at pressures up to 3 bar, are presented. An energy resolution of 8.0% was obtained for secondary scintillation produced by 5.9 keV X-rays. No significant variation of the primary scintillation was observed for different pressures (1, 2 and 3 bar) and for electric fields up to 0.8 V cm(-1) torr(-1) in the drift region, demonstrating negligible recombination luminescence. A primary scintillation yield of 81 +/- 7 photons was obtained for 5.9 keV X-rays, corresponding to a mean energy of 72 +/- 6 eV to produce a primary scintillation photon in xenon.
|
|
|
Esteve, R., Toledo, J., Monrabal, F., Lorca, D., Serra, L., Mari, A., et al. (2012). The trigger system in the NEXT-DEMO detector. J. Instrum., 7, C12001–9pp.
Abstract: NEXT-DEMO is a prototype of NEXT (Neutrino Experiment with Xenon TPC), an experiment to search for neutrino-less double beta decay using a 100 kg radio-pure, 90 % enriched (136Xe isotope) high-pressure gaseous xenon TPC with electroluminescence readout. The detector is based on a PMT plane for energy measurements and a SiPM tracking plane for topological event filtering. The experiment will be located in the Canfranc Underground Laboratory in Spain. Front-end electronics, trigger and data-acquisition systems (DAQ) have been built. The DAQ is an implementation of the Scalable Readout System (RD51 collaboration) based on FPGA. Our approach for trigger is to have a distributed and reconfigurable system in the DAQ itself. Moreover, the trigger allows on-line triggering based on the detection of primary or secondary scintillation light, or a combination of both, that arrives to the PMT plane.
|
|
|
Esperante-Pereira, D. (2014). DEPFET active pixel sensors for the vertex detector of the Belle-II experiment. J. Instrum., 9, C03004–11pp.
Abstract: Active pixels sensors based on the DEPFET technology will be used for the innermost vertex detector of the future Belle-II experiment. The increased luminosity of the e(+) e(-) SuperKEKB collider entails challenging detector requirements, namely: low material budget, low power consumption, high precision and efficiency, and a large readout rate. The DEPFET active pixel technology has shown to be a suitable solution for this purpose. A review of the different aspects of the detector design (sensors, readout ASICS and supplementary infrastructure) and the results of the latest thinned sensor prototypes (50 μm) are described.
|
|
|
DUNE Collaboration(Abud, A. A. et al), Antonova, M., Barenboim, G., Cervera-Villanueva, A., De Romeri, V., Fernandez Menendez, P., et al. (2022). Design, construction and operation of the ProtoDUNE-SP Liquid Argon TPC. J. Instrum., 17(1), P01005–111pp.
Abstract: The ProtoDUNE-SP detector is a single-phase liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) that was constructed and operated in the CERN North Area at the end of the H4 beamline. This detector is a prototype for the first far detector module of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), which will be constructed at the Sandford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, South Dakota, U.S.A. The ProtoDUNE-SP detector incorporates full-size components as designed for DUNE and has an active volume of 7 x 6 x 7.2 m3. The H4 beam delivers incident particles with well-measured momenta and high-purity particle identification. ProtoDUNE-SP's successful operation between 2018 and 2020 demonstrates the effectiveness of the single-phase far detector design. This paper describes the design, construction, assembly and operation of the detector components.
Keywords: Noble liquid detectors (scintillation, ionization, double-phase); Photon detectors for UV; visible and IR photons (solid-state) (PIN diodes, APDs, Si-PMTs, G-APDs, CCDs, EBCCDs, EMCCDs, CMOS imagers, etc); Scintillators; scintillation and light emission processes (solid, gas and liquid scintillators); Time projection Chambers (TPC)
|
|
|
DUNE Collaboration(Abud, A. A. et al), Amedo, P., Antonova, M., Barenboim, G., Cervera-Villanueva, A., De Romeri, V., et al. (2023). Highly-parallelized simulation of a pixelated LArTPC on a GPU. J. Instrum., 18(4), P04034–35pp.
Abstract: The rapid development of general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) is allowing the implementation of highly-parallelized Monte Carlo simulation chains for particle physics experiments. This technique is particularly suitable for the simulation of a pixelated charge readout for time projection chambers, given the large number of channels that this technology employs. Here we present the first implementation of a full microphysical simulator of a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) equipped with light readout and pixelated charge readout, developed for the DUNE Near Detector. The software is implemented with an end-to-end set of GPU-optimized algorithms. The algorithms have been written in Python and translated into CUDA kernels using Numba, a just-in-time compiler for a subset of Python and NumPy instructions. The GPU implementation achieves a speed up of four orders of magnitude compared with the equivalent CPU version. The simulation of the current induced on 103 pixels takes around 1 ms on the GPU, compared with approximately 10 s on the CPU. The results of the simulation are compared against data from a pixel-readout LArTPC prototype.
|
|
|
DUNE Collaboration(Abi, B. et al), Antonova, M., Barenboim, G., Cervera-Villanueva, A., De Romeri, V., Fernandez Menendez, P., et al. (2020). First results on ProtoDUNE-SP liquid argon time projection chamber performance from a beam test at the CERN Neutrino Platform. J. Instrum., 15(12), P12004–100pp.
Abstract: The ProtoDUNE-SP detector is a single-phase liquid argon time projection chamber with an active volume of 7.2 x 6.1 x 7.0 m(3). It is installed at the CERN Neutrino Platform in a specially-constructed beam that delivers charged pions, kaons, protons, muons and electrons with momenta in the range 0.3 GeV/c to 7 GeV/c. Beam line instrumentation provides accurate momentum measurements and particle identification. The ProtoDUNE-SP detector is a prototype for the first far detector module of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, and it incorporates full-size components as designed for that module. This paper describes the beam line, the time projection chamber, the photon detectors, the cosmic-ray tagger, the signal processing and particle reconstruction. It presents the first results on ProtoDUNE-SP's performance, including noise and gain measurements, dE/dx calibration for muons, protons, pions and electrons, drift electron lifetime measurements, and photon detector noise, signal sensitivity and time resolution measurements. The measured values meet or exceed the specifications for the DUNE far detector, in several cases by large margins. ProtoDUNE-SP's successful operation starting in 2018 and its production of large samples of high-quality data demonstrate the effectiveness of the single-phase far detector design.
|
|