Tests of PMT Signal Read-out of Liquid Argon Scintillation with a New Fast Waveform Digitizer

Abstract

The CAEN V1751 is a new generation of Waveform Digitizer recently introduced by CAEN SpA. It features 8 Channels per board, 10 bit, 1 GS/s using Flash ADCs Waveform Digitizers (or 4 channels at 2 GS/s in Dual Edge Sampling mode) with threshold and Auto-Trigger capabilities. This provides a good basis for data acquisition in Dark Matter searches using PMTs to detect scintillation light in liquid argon, as it matches the requirements for measuring the fast scintillation component. The board was tested by operating it in real experimental conditions and by comparing it with a state of the art digital oscilloscope. We find that the sampling at 1 or 2 GS/s is appropriate for the reconstruction of the fast component of the scintillation light in argon (characteristic time of about 6-7 ns) and the extended dynamic range, after a small customization, allows for the detection of signals in the range of energy needed. The bandwidth is found to be adequate and the intrinsic noise is very low.

arXiv commentPublished in Journal of Instrumentation

References in corpus (4)

• Measurement of the specific activity of Ar-39 in natural argon
• Oxygen contamination in liquid Argon: combined effects on ionization electron charge and scintillation light
• Demonstration and Comparison of Operation of Photomultiplier Tubes at Liquid Argon Temperature
• First results on light readout from the 1-ton ArDM liquid argon detector for dark matter searches

Cited by in corpus (2)

• An 8-Gs/s 12-Bit TIADC System With Real-Time Broadband Mismatch Error Correction
• The Waveform Digitiser of the Double Chooz Experiment: Performance and Quantisation Effects on PhotoMultiplier Tube Signals