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Marco-Hernandez, R., Bau, M., Ferrari, M., Ferrari, V., Pedersen, F., & Soby, L. (2017). A Low-Noise Charge Amplifier for the ELENA Trajectory, Orbit, and Intensity Measurement System. IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., 64(9), 2465–2473.
Abstract: A low-noise head amplifier has been developed for the extra low energy antiproton ring beam trajectory, orbit, and intensity measurement system at CERN. This system is based on 24 double-electrode electrostatic beam position monitors installed around the ring. A head amplifier is placed close to each beam position monitor to amplify the electrode signals and generate a difference and a sum signal. These signals are sent to the digital acquisition system, about 50 m away from the ring, where they are digitized and further processed. The beam position can be measured by dividing the difference signal by the sum signal while the sum signal gives information relative to the beam intensity. The head amplifier consists of two discrete charge preamplifiers with junction field effect transistor (JFET) inputs, a sum and a difference stage, and two cable drivers. Special attention has been paid to the amplifier printed circuit board design to minimize the parasitic capacitances and inductances at the charge amplifier stages to meet the gain and noise requirements. The measurements carried out on the head amplifier showed a gain of 40.5 and 46.5 dB for the sum and difference outputs with a bandwidth from 200 Hz to 75 MHz and an input voltage noise density lower than 400 pV/v Hz. Twenty head amplifiers have been already installed in the ring and they have been used to detect the first beam signals during the first commissioning stage in November 2016.
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Aliaga, R. J. (2017). Real-Time Estimation of Zero Crossings of Sampled Signals for Timing Using Cubic Spline Interpolation. IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., 64(8), 2414–2422.
Abstract: A scheme is proposed for hardware estimation of the location of zero crossings of sampled signals with subsample resolution for timing applications, which consists of interpolating the signal with a cubic spline near the zero crossing and then finding the root of the resulting polynomial. An iterative algorithm based on the bisection method is presented that obtains one bit of the result per step and admits an efficient digital implementation using fixed-point representation. In particular, the root estimation iteration involves only two additions, and the initial values can be obtained from finite impulse response (FIR) filters with certain symmetry properties. It is shown that this allows online real-time estimation of timestamps in free-running sampling detector systems with improved accuracy with respect to the more common linear interpolation. The method is evaluated with simulations using ideal and real timing signals, and estimates are given for the resource usage and speed of its implementation.
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Gonzalez-Iglesias, D., Esperante, D., Gimeno, B., Boronat, M., Blanch, C., Fuster-Martinez, N., et al. (2021). Analytical RF Pulse Heating Analysis for High Gradient Accelerating Structures. IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., 68(2), 78–91.
Abstract: The main aim of this work is to present a simple method, based on analytical expressions, for obtaining the temperature increase due to the Joule effect inside the metallic walls of an RF accelerating component. This technique relies on solving the 1-D heat-transfer equation for a thick wall, considering that the heat sources inside the wall are the ohmic losses produced by the RF electromagnetic fields penetrating the metal with finite electrical conductivity. Furthermore, it is discussed how the theoretical expressions of this method can be applied to obtain an approximation to the temperature increase in realistic 3-D RF accelerating structures, taking as an example the cavity of an RF electron photoinjector and a traveling wave linac cavity. These theoretical results have been benchmarked with numerical simulations carried out with commercial finite-element method (FEM) software, finding good agreement among them. Besides, the advantage of the analytical method with respect to the numerical simulations is evidenced. In particular, the model could be very useful during the design and optimization phase of RF accelerating structures, where many different combinations of parameters must be analyzed in order to obtain the proper working point of the device, allowing to save time and speed up the process. However, it must be mentioned that the method described in this article is intended to provide a quick approximation to the temperature increase in the device, which of course is not as accurate as the proper 3-D numerical simulations of the component.
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Carrio, F. (2022). The Data Acquisition System for the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter Phase-II Upgrade Demonstrator. IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., 69(4), 687–695.
Abstract: The tile calorimeter (TileCal) is the central hadronic calorimeter of the ATLAS experiment at the large hadron collider (LHC). In 2025, the LHC will be upgraded leading to the high luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). The HL-LHC will deliver an instantaneous luminosity up to seven times larger than the LHC nominal luminosity. The ATLAS Phase-II upgrade (2025-2027) will accommodate the subdetectors to the HL-LHC requirements. As part of this upgrade, the majority of the TileCal on-detector and off-detector electronics will be replaced using a new readout strategy, where the on-detector electronics will digitize and transmit digitized detector data to the off-detector electronics at the bunch crossing frequency (40 MHz). In the counting rooms, the off-detector electronics will compute reconstructed trigger objects for the first-level trigger and will store the digitized samples in pipelined buffers until the reception of a trigger acceptance signal. The off-detector electronics will also distribute the LHC clock to the on-detector electronics embedded within the digital data stream. The TileCal Phase-II upgrade project has undertaken an extensive research and development program that includes the development of a Demonstrator module to evaluate the performance of the new clock and readout architecture envisaged for the HL-LHC. The Demonstrator module equipped with the latest version of the on-detector electronics was built and inserted into the ATLAS experiment. The Demonstrator module is operated and read out using a Tile PreProcessor (TilePPr) Demonstrator which enables backward compatibility with the present ATLAS Trigger and Data AcQuisition (TDAQ), and the timing, trigger, and command (TTC) systems. This article describes in detail the main hardware and firmware components of the clock distribution and data acquisition systems for the Demonstrator module, focusing on the TilePPr Demonstrator.
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Briz, J. A., Nerio, A. N., Ballesteros, C., Borge, M. J. G., Martinez, P., Perea, A., et al. (2022). Proton Radiographs Using Position-Sensitive Silicon Detectors and High-Resolution Scintillators. IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., 69(4), 696–702.
Abstract: Proton therapy is a cancer treatment technique currently in growth since it offers advantages with respect to conventional X-ray and gamma-ray radiotherapy. In particular, better control of the dose deposition allowing to reach higher conformity in the treatments causing less secondary effects. However, in order to take full advantage of its potential, improvements in treatment planning and dose verification are required. A new prototype of proton computed tomography scanner is proposed to design more accurate and precise treatment plans for proton therapy. Our prototype is formed by double-sided silicon strip detectors and scintillators of LaBr3(Ce) with high energy resolution and fast response. Here, the results obtained from an experiment performed using a 100-MeV proton beam are presented. Proton radiographs of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) samples of 50-mm thickness with spatial patterns in aluminum were taken. Their properties were studied, including reproduction of the dimensions, spatial resolution, and sensitivity to different materials. Structures of up to 2 mm are well resolved and the sensitivity of the system was enough to distinguish the thicknesses of 10 mm of aluminum or PMMA. The spatial resolution of the images was 0.3 line pairs per mm (MTF-10%). This constitutes the first step to validate the device as a proton radiography scanner.
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