Front-end electronics and readout system for the ILD TPC

Abstract

A high resolution TPC is the main option for a central tracking detector at the future International Linear Collider (ILC). It is planned that the MPGD (Micro Pattern Gas Detector) technology will be used for the readout. A Large Prototype TPC at DESY has been used to test the performance of MPGDs in an electron beam of energies up to 6 GeV. The first step in the technology development was to demonstrate that the MPGDs are able to achieve the necessary performance set by the goals of ILC. For this 'proof of principle' phase, the ALTRO front-end electronics from the ALICE TPC was used, modified to adapt to MPGD readout. The proof of principle has been verified and at present further improvement of the MPGD technology is going on, using the same readout electronics. The next step is the 'feasibility phase', which aims at producing front-end electronics comparable in size (few mm 2 ) to the readout pads of the TPC. This development work is based on the succeeding SALTRO16 chip, which combines the analogue and digital signal processing in the same chip. This paper summarizes the status of this work and discusses how the experiences made so far can be exploited to improve the final readout electronics.

Measurement of the electron transmission rate of the gating foil for the TPC of the ILC experiment

“…The experiment was conducted after the measurement of the avalanche fluctuation [28] with essentially the same setup using a test chamber box for the prototype readout module of the ILD-TPC, and a radiation source: an un-collimated 55 Fe source or a laser. Only the amplifier and the digitizer (modified ALTRO readout system [29,30]) were replaced with the combination of a charge-sensitive preamplifier (ORTEC 142PC), a shaper amplifier (ORTEC 672), and a CAMAC peak-sensitive analog-to-digital converter module (Hoshin ADC C008).…”