Frankfurt 2014 – scientific programme

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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 6: Instrumentierung

HK 6.4: Talk

Monday, March 17, 2014, 14:45–15:00, HZ 8

Frontend Electronics for high-precision single photo-electron timing using FPGA-TDCs — •Matteo Cardinali for the PANDA Cherenkov collaboration — Helmholtz Institut Mainz

The next generation of high-luminosity experiments requires excellent Particle Identification (PID) detectors which calls for Imaging Cherenkov counters with fast electronics to cope with the expected data rates. The planned PANDA experiment at FAIR expects average interaction rates of 20MHz. A Barrel DIRC will provide PID in the central region of the Target Spectrometer. A single photo-electron timing resolution of better than 100ps is projected for the Barrel DIRC to disentangle the complicated patterns created by the focusing optics on the image plane. The typically large amount of readout channels (approx 15,000 in case of the PANDA Barrel DIRC) places non-negligible limits on size and power consumption of the Front-End Electronics (FEE). The proposed design is based on the TRBv3 readout using FPGA-TDCs with a precision better than 20ps RMS and custom FEE with high-bandwidth pre-amplifiers and fast discriminators. Two types of FEE cards optimised for reading out 64-channel Photonis Planacon MCP-PMTs were tested: one based on the NINO ASIC developed for the ALICE RPC readout and the other, called PaDiWa, using FPGA-based discriminators. Both types of FEE cards were tested with a small DIRC prototype comprising a radiator bar with focusing lens and an oil-filled expansion volume instrumented with 6 Planacon 64-channel MCP-PMTs. In the presentation the result of a test experiment performed at MAMI B, Mainz, will be addressed.