Modeling high impedance connecting links and cables below 1 Hz

High impedance connecting links and cables are modeled at low frequency in terms of their impedance to ground and to neigbouring connecting links. The impedance is usually considered to be the parallel combination of a resistance and a capacitance. While this model is adequate at moderate and low frequency, it proved to be not satisfactory at very low frequency, in the fractions of Hz range. Deep characterization was carried out on some samples down to 10 uHz, showing that an additional contribution to capacitance can emerge. A model was developed to explain and account for this additional contribution

CLARO-CMOS, a very low power ASIC for fast photon counting with pixellated photodetectors

The CLARO-CMOS is an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designed for fast photon counting with pixellated photodetectors such as multi-anode photomultiplier tubes (Ma-PMT), micro-channel plates (MCP), and silicon photomultipliers (SiPM). The first prototype has four channels, each with a charge sensitive amplifier with settable gain and a discriminator with settable threshold, providing fast hit information for each channel independently. The design was realized in a long-established, stable and inexpensive 0.35 um CMOS technology, and provides outstanding performance in terms of speed and power dissipation. The prototype consumes less than 1 mW per channel at low rate, and less than 2 mW at an event rate of 10 MHz per channel. The recovery time after each pulse is less than 25 ns for input signals within a factor of 10 above threshold. Input referred RMS noise is about 7.7 ke^- (1.2 fC) with an input capacitance of 3.3 pF. Thanks to the low noise and high speed, a timing resolution down to 10 ps RMS was measured for typical photomultiplier signals of a few million electrons, corresponding to the single photon response for these detectors

Special Issue on Development and Application of Particle Detectors

Particle detection has been increasingly applied over a wide range of disciplines, including high-energy physics, astroparticles, space science and astronomy, biological sciences, medical imaging, remote sensing, environmental monitoring, cultural heritage, and homeland security [...

Electron-phonon coupling in Ti/TiN MKIDs multilayer microresonator

Over the last few years there has been a growing interest toward the use of superconducting microwave microresonators operated in quasi-thermal equilibrium mode, especially applied to single particle detection. Indeed, previous devices designed and tested by our group with X-ray sources in the keV range evidenced that several issues arise from the attempt of detection through athermal quasiparticles produced within direct strikes of X-rays in the superconductor material of the resonator. In order to prevent issues related to quasiparticles self-recombination and to avoid exchange of athermal phonons with the substrate, our group focused on the development of thermal superconducting microresonators. In this configuration resonators composed of multilayer films of Ti/TiN sense the temperature of an absorbing material. To maximize the thermal response, low critical temperature films are preferable. By lowering the critical temperature, though, the maximum probing power bearable by the resonators decrease abruptly because of the weakening of the electron-phonon coupling. A proper compromise has to be found in order to avoid signal to noise ratio degradation. In this contribution we report the latest measurement of the electron-phonon coupling

Sequence of penalties method to study excited states using VQE

We propose an extension of the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) that leads to more accurate energy estimations and can be used to study excited states. The method is based on the introduction of a sequence of increasing penalties in the cost function. This approach does not require circuit modifications and thus can be applied with no additional depth cost. Through numerical simulations, we show that we are able to produce variational states with desired physical properties, such as total spin and charge. We assess its performance both on classical simulators and on currently available quantum devices, calculating the potential energy curves of small molecular systems in different physical configurations. Finally, we compare our method to the original VQE and to another extension, obtaining a better agreement with exact simulations for both energy and targeted physical quantities.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, accepted in IOP Quantum Science and Technolog

Evaluación de costos de insumos, equipamiento e instalaciones necesarias para el correcto diagnóstico de trichinellosis por el método de digestión artificial

La trichinellosis es una enfermedad parasitaria zoonótica que reviste gran importancia epidemiológica, problemas de salud humana y pérdidas económicas importantes. El método diagnóstico correcto para asegurar la aptitud de consumo de carnes en especies involucradas es el de la digestión artificial, la cual puede realizarse de manera individual o en grupos de muestras. En el presente trabajo se realiza un análisis de costos, basado en una recopilación de datos acerca de insumos y equipamientos, diferenciando los mismos en el caso de montar un laboratorio de cercanía y en el de uno de referencia; como así también una revisión de las condiciones para la instalación de un laboratorio de procesamiento de muestras para la digestión artificial, descripción de la técnica, toma de muestra y sensibilidad de la prueba.Especialista en Diagnóstico Veterinario de LaboratorioUniversidad Nacional de La PlataFacultad de Ciencias Veterinaria

Characterization of high impedance connecting links for Bolometric detectors

Abstract High impedance connecting links and cables are tested at low frequency in terms of their parasitic impedance to ground and to neighboring connecting links. These parameters must be well characterized with detectors operated at low temperature, especially when the very front-end is at room temperature, which results in a long link. This is the case of the LUCIFER experiment, an array of crystals where every event of interest produces two signals, one composed of phonons, the other of photons. The parasitic impedance is usually considered to be the parallel combination of a resistance and a capacitance. We characterized both and found that from the static measurements the capacitance of the cable resulted much larger. On the basis of this result we optimized the measurement set-up and developed a model to account for this behavior

An ultra fast, low power readout chain for single photon sensitivity with multi-anode photomultiplier tubes for the RICH upgrade at LHCb

Abstract An upgrade proposal for the LHCb RICH detectors at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is being developed at the INFN section of Milano Bicocca, based on multi-anode photomultiplier tubes. The application requires the fast readout of Cherenkov rings of photons, with single photon sensitivity, at an event rate up to 40 MHz. The proposed readout chain is tailored for the R7600 multi-anode photomultiplier tubes from Hamamatsu, which proved to fit the single photon sensitivity requirement. The readout electronics for each pixel will be composed of an analog pulse shaper, a binary discriminator and additional digital circuitry to count the pulses. A prototype of the analog shaper was built with commercial discrete transistors in Silicon–Germanium (SiGe) Heterojunction technology. The tradeoff between response speed and power dissipation was investigated; and power as low as a few mW per channel could be achieved with response times of the order of one nanosecond. Furthermore, noise and jitter were evaluated, showing very good performances of the prototype