75
Pico
TOF: A Time-of-Flight Data Acquisition System for Ultra-Fast Particle
Detectors--Blue
Sky Electronics, LLC,
Mr.
Lloyd W. Bridges, Principal Investigator, lwbridges@sbcglobal.net
Mr.
Lloyd W. Bridges, Business Official, lwbridges@sbcglobal.net
DOE
Grant No. DE-FG02-03ER83832
Amount:
$749,598
This project will develop a
Time-of-Flight (TOF) detector to significantly extend the reach of the
Solenoidal Tracker the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (STAR). In
particular, the percentage of kaons and protons that could be identified would
be doubled to more than 95% of all those produced in central Au+Au collisions. Combined
with existing STAR detectors, the additional capability provided by the TOF
detector would allow STAR to extract the maximum amount of information
available. TOF particle
identification will require low jitter amplification of 50 x 10-15 C
charge pulses and 100ps aggregate start-stop timing resolution, with no more
than 50ps timing resolution from the electronics chain. Phase
I designed, built, and demonstrated a second generation, 24-channel,
amplifier/discriminator circuit and a time-to-digital (TDC) circuit. Tested
together, these circuits demonstrated sub-50ps start-stop resolution
performance. Phase II will scale up
the TDC circuit to 24 channels. The
analog and TDC circuits will be combined with data communications circuits for
interface with STAR. The detectors
and electronics will be integrated at the multiple-tray level, and the resulting
192-channel modules will be tested both with cosmic rays and at STAR. Further,
TDC electronics will be adapted for stand-alone operation.
Commercial Applications and Other
Benefits
as described by awardee: TDC
circuits are commonly used in some types time-of-flight mass spectrometers that
are becoming basic research and production tools for the biotechnology and
pharmaceutical industries. Also,
TDCs, in combination with lasers, have potential large-scale application in
atmospheric sensing, terrain mapping, and three-dimensional structural imaging.