A readout system for a cosmic ray telescope using Resistive Plate Chambers

Cussans, D.; Baesso, P.; Burns, Jonathan D.; Quillin, S.; Steer, C.; Thomay, Christian; Velthuis, J. J.

doi:10.1088/1748-0221/8/03/c03003

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Synchronisation of the different telescope planes is achieved via a central logic unit (TLU, Telescope Logic Unit) that provides the clock to all SPIDR systems. The TLU hardware is based on a Xilinx SP601 evaluation board and the fan out of the signal is is done with boards originally designed for a cosmic ray experiment [10]. The TLU also supplies a signal to synchronise all time counters, and a shutter signal to synchronously control the start and stop of the data flow.…”

Section: Data Acquisition (Daq)mentioning

confidence: 99%

LHCb VELO Timepix3 telescope

Akiba¹,

Beuzekom

Boterenbrood³

et al. 2019

J. Inst.

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The LHCb VELO Timepix3 telescope is a silicon pixel tracking system constructed initially to evaluate the performance of LHCb VELO Upgrade prototypes. The telesope consists of eight hybrid pixel silicon sensor planes equipped with the Timepix3 ASIC. The planes provide excellent charge measurement, timestamping and spatial resolution and the system can function at high track rates. This paper describes the construction of the telescope and its data acquisition system and offline reconstruction software. A timing resolution of 350 ps was obtained for reconstructed tracks. A pointing resolution of better than 2 µm was determined for the 180 GeV/c mixed hadron beam at the CERN SPS. The telescope has been shown to operate at a rate of 5 million particles s −1 · cm −2 without a loss in efficiency.

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Section: Data Acquisition (Daq)mentioning

confidence: 99%

LHCb VELO Timepix3 telescope

Akiba¹,

Beuzekom

Boterenbrood³

et al. 2019

J. Inst.

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“…The signal collected by the pickup strips is fed to the inputs of a front-end board designed in Bristol [9] and hosting five MAROC [10] readout ASICs. When the board receives a trigger signal, provided externally, the inputs are digitized and sent to a buffer.…”

Section: Hardware Setupmentioning

confidence: 99%

Degradation in the efficiency of glass Resistive Plate Chambers operated without external gas supply

et al. 2015

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Resistive plate chambers (RPC) are particle detectors commonly used by the high energy physics community. Their normal operation requires a constant flow of gas mixture to prevent self-poisoning which reduces the chamber's capability to detect particles. We studied how quickly the efficiency of two RPCs drops when operated in sealed mode, i.e. without refreshing the gas mixture. The test aim is to determine how RPCs could be used as particle detectors in non-laboratory applications, such as those exploiting muon tomography for geological imaging or homeland security.The two sealed RPCs were operated in proportional mode for a period of more than three months, and their efficiencies were recorded continuously and analysed in 8-hours intervals. The results show that the efficiency drops on average by 0.79 ± 0.01 % every 24 hours of operation and returns close to the initial value after purging the old gas mixture and flushing the chambers with fresh gas.

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“…A single PCB with 1.68 mm pitch readout strips is glued on the top of each RPC. 320 strips run along the length of the PCB and are read out by a single board [23], designed in Bristol, which digitizes their signal and transmits them to the DAQ. Each board hosts five MAROC readout chips [16], each one connected to 64 strips.…”

Section: Toward a Large Prototypementioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a RPC-based muon tomography system for cargo containers.

Baesso¹,

Cussans²,

Thomay³

et al. 2014

J. Inst.

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A large area scanner for cosmic muon tomography is currently being developed at University of Bristol.Thanks to their abundance and penetrating power, cosmic muons have been suggested as ideal candidates to scan large containers in search of special nuclear materials, which are characterized by high-Z and high density. The feasibility of such a scanner heavily depends on the detectors used to track the muons: for a typical container, the minimum required sensitive area is of the order of 100 2. The spatial resolution required depends on the geometrical configuration of the detectors. For practical purposes, a resolution of the order of 1 mm or better is desirable. A good time resolution can be exploited to provide momentum information: a resolution of the order of nanoseconds can be used to separate sub-GeV muons from muons with higher energies.Resistive plate chambers have a low cost per unit area and good spatial and time resolution; these features make them an excellent choice as detectors for muon tomography.In order to instrument a large area demonstrator we have produced 25 new readout boards and 30 glass RPCs. The RPCs measure 1800 mm× 600 mm and are read out using 1.68 mm pitch copper strips.The chambers were tested with a standardized procedure, i.e. without optimizing the working parameters to take into account differences in the manufacturing process, and the results show that the RPCs have an efficiency between 87% and 95%. The readout electronics show a signal to noise ratio greater than 20 for minimum ionizing particles. Spatial resolution better than 500 μm can easily be achieved using commercial read out ASICs. These results are better than the original minimum requirements to pass the tests and we are now ready to install the detectors.

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A readout system for a cosmic ray telescope using Resistive Plate Chambers

Cited by 6 publications

References 15 publications

LHCb VELO Timepix3 telescope

LHCb VELO Timepix3 telescope

Degradation in the efficiency of glass Resistive Plate Chambers operated without external gas supply

Toward a RPC-based muon tomography system for cargo containers.

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