A prototype of a new type of calorimeter has been designed and constructed, based on a silicon–tungsten sampling design using pixel sensors with digital readout. It makes use of the ALPIDE sensor ...developed for the ALICE Inner Tracking System (ITS) upgrade. A binary readout is possible due to the pixel size of ≈30×30μm2. This prototype has been successfully tested with cosmic muons and with test beams at DESY and the CERN SPS. We report on performance results obtained at DESY, showing good energy resolution and linearity, and compare to detailed MC simulations. Also shown are preliminary results of the high-energy performance as measured at the SPS. The two-shower separation capabilities are discussed.
•First fully digital electromagnetic calorimeter with high-speed readout built.•ALPIDE pixel sensors work well in high particle-density environment.•Basic calorimetric performance of pixel calorimeter on par with state of the art.•Has unique capabilities in terms of position resolution and two-shower separation.
This paper describes how fault injection has been implemented as a test method for an FPGA in an existing hardware configuration setup. As this FPGA is in charge of data readout for a large tracking ...detector, the reliability of this FPGA is of high importance. Due to the complexity of the readout electronics, irradiation testing is technically difficult at this stage of the system commissioning. The work presented in this paper is therefore motivated by introducing fault injection as an alternative method to characterize failures caused by SEUs. It is a method to study the effect that a configuration upset may have on the operation of the FPGA.
The target platform consists of two independent modules for data acquisition and detector control functionality. Fault injection to test the response of the data acquisition module is made possible by implementing the solution as part of the detector control functionality.
Correct implementation is validated by a simple shift register design. Our results demonstrate that fault injection can assist in measuring the effect of an implemented mitigation technique in the final design of the FPGA.
Radiation therapy with protons as of today utilizes information from x-ray CT in order to estimate the proton stopping power of the traversed tissue in a patient. The conversion from x-ray ...attenuation to proton stopping power in tissue introduces range uncertainties of the order of 2–3% of the range, uncertainties that are contributing to an increase of the necessary planning margins added to the target volume in a patient. Imaging methods and modalities, such as Dual Energy CT and proton CT, have come into consideration in the pursuit of obtaining an as good as possible estimate of the proton stopping power. In this study, a Digital Tracking Calorimeter is benchmarked for proof-of-concept for proton CT purposes. The Digital Tracking Calorimeter was originally designed for the reconstruction of high-energy electromagnetic showers for the ALICE-FoCal project. The presented prototype forms the basis for a proton CT system using a single technology for tracking and calorimetry. This advantage simplifies the setup and reduces the cost of a proton CT system assembly, and it is a unique feature of the Digital Tracking Calorimeter concept. Data from the AGORFIRM beamline at KVI-CART in Groningen in the Netherlands and Monte Carlo simulation results are used to in order to develop a tracking algorithm for the estimation of the residual ranges of a high number of concurrent proton tracks. High energy protons traversing the detector leave a track through the sensor layers. These tracks are spread out through charge diffusion processes. A charge diffusion model is applied for acquisition of estimates of the deposited energy of the protons in each sensor layer by using the size of the charge diffused area. A model fit of the Bragg Curve is applied to each reconstructed track and through this, estimating the residual range of each proton. The range of the individual protons can at present be estimated with a resolution of 4%. The readout system for this prototype is able to handle an effective proton frequency of 1MHz by using 500 concurrent proton tracks in each readout frame, which is at the high end range of present similar prototypes. A future further optimized prototype will enable a high-speed and more accurate determination of the ranges of individual protons in a therapeutic beam.
Signal shapes in multiwire proportional chamber-based TPCs Windelband, J. Alme T. Alt H. Appelshäuser M. Arslandok R. Averbeck E. Bartsch P. Becht L. Bratrud P. Braun-Munzinger H. Buesching H. Caines P. Christiansen F. Costa U. Frankenfeld J. J. Gaardhøje C. Garabatos P. Glässel T. Gunji H. Hamagaki J. W. Harris E. Hellbär H. Helstrup M. Ivanov J. Jung M. Jung A. Junique A. Kalweit R. Keidel S. Kirsch M. Kleiner M. Kowalski M. Krüger C. Lippmann M. Mager S. Masciocchi A. Matyja D. Miśkowiec R. H. Munzer L. Musa B. S. Nielsen J. Otwinowski M. Pikna A. Rehman R. Renfordt D. Röhrich H. S. Scheid C. Schmidt H. R. Schmidt K. Schweda Y. Sekiguchi D. Silvermyr B. Sitar J. Stachel K. Ullaland R. Veenhof V. Vislavicius J. Wiechula B
arXiv (Cornell University),
12/2023
Paper, Journal Article
Odprti dostop
A large-volume Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is the main tracking and particle identification (PID) detector of the ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC. PID in the TPC is performed via specific ...energy-loss measurements (dE/dx), which are derived from the average pulse-height distribution of ionization generated by charged-particle tracks traversing the TPC volume. During Runs 1 and 2, until 2018, the gas amplification stage was based on multiwire proportional chambers (MWPC). Signals from the MWPC show characteristic long negative tails after an initial positive peak due to the long ion drift times in the MWPC amplification region. This so-called ion tail can lead to a significant amplitude loss in subsequently measured signals, especially in the high-multiplicity environment of high-energy Pb-Pb collisions, which results in a degradation of the dE/dx resolution. A detailed study of the signal shapes measured with the ALICE TPC with the Ne-CO2 (90-10) and Ar-CO2 (90-10) gas mixtures is presented, and the results are compared with three-dimensional Garfield simulations. The impact of the ion tail on the PID performance is studied employing the ALICE simulation framework and the feasibility of an offline correction procedure to account for the ion tail is demonstrated.
PDF
