Data acquisition electronics and reconstruction software for directional detection of Dark Matter with MIMAC

Directional detection of galactic Dark Matter requires 3D reconstruction of low energy nuclear recoils tracks. A dedicated acquisition electronics with auto triggering feature and a real time track reconstruction software have been developed within the framework of the MIMAC project of detector. This auto-triggered acquisition electronic uses embedded processing to reduce data transfer to its useful part only, i.e. decoded coordinates of hit tracks and corresponding energy measurements. An acquisition software with on-line monitoring and 3D track reconstruction is also presented.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figure

The infrared imaging spectrograph (IRIS) for TMT: on-instrument wavefront sensors and NFIRAOS interface

The InfraRed Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) is a first light client science instrument for the TMT observatory that operates as a client of the NFIRAOS facility multi-conjugate adaptive optics system. This paper reports on the concept study and baseline concept design of the On-Instrument WaveFront Sensors (OIWFS) and NFIRAOS interface subsystems of the IRIS science instrument, a collaborative effort by NRC-HIA, Caltech, and TMT AO and Instrument teams. This includes work on system engineering, structural and thermal design, sky coverage modeling, patrol geometry, probe optics and mechanics design, camera design, and controls design.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures, SPIE7735-28

Plasduino: an inexpensive, general purpose data acquisition framework for educational experiments

Based on the Arduino development platform, Plasduino is an open-source data acquisition framework specifically designed for educational physics experiments. The source code, schematics and documentation are in the public domain under a GPL license and the system, streamlined for low cost and ease of use, can be replicated on the scale of a typical didactic lab with minimal effort. We describe the basic architecture of the system and illustrate its potential with some real-life examples.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, presented at the XCIX conference of the Societ\`a Italiana di Fisic

Hardware for digitally controlled scanned probe microscopes

The design and implementation of a flexible and modular digital control and data acquisition system for scanned probe microscopes (SPMs) is presented. The measured performance of the system shows it to be capable of 14-bit data acquisition at a 100-kHz rate and a full 18-bit output resolution resulting in less than 0.02-Å rms position noise while maintaining a scan range in excess of 1 µm in both the X and Y dimensions. This level of performance achieves the goal of making the noise of the microscope control system an insignificant factor for most experiments. The adaptation of the system to various types of SPM experiments is discussed. Advances in audio electronics and digital signal processors have made the construction of such high performance systems possible at low cost

A closed-loop digitally controlled MEMS gyroscope with unconstrained Sigma-Delta force-feedback

In this paper, we describe the system architecture and prototype measurements of a MEMS gyroscope system with a resolution of 0.025 degrees/s/root Hz. The architecture makes extensive use of control loops, which are mostly in the digital domain. For the primary mode both the amplitude and the resonance frequency are tracked and controlled. The secondary mode readout is based on unconstrained Sigma Delta force-feedback, which does not require a compensation filter in the loop and thus allows more beneficial quantization noise shaping than prior designs of the same order. Due to the force-feedback, the gyroscope has ample dynamic range to correct the quadrature error in the digital domain. The largely digital setup also gives a lot of flexibility in characterization and testing, where system identification techniques have been used to characterize the sensors. This way, a parasitic direct electrical coupling between actuation and readout of the mass-spring systems was estimated and corrected in the digital domain. Special care is also given to the capacitive readout circuit, which operates in continuous time

A high-Tc 4-bit periodic threshold analog-to-digital converter

Using ramp-type Josephson junctions a 4-bit periodic threshold ADC has been designed, fabricated and tested. Practical design constraints will be discussed in terms of noise immunity, flux flow, available technology, switching speed etc. In a period of four years we fabricated about 100 chips in order to bring the technology to an acceptable level and to test various designs and circuit layouts. This resulted in a basic comparator that is rather insensitive to the stray field generated by the analog input signal or variations in mask alignment during fabrication. The input signal is fed into the comparators using a resistive divider network. Full functionality at low frequencies has been demonstrate

The Heavy Photon Search test detector

The Heavy Photon Search (HPS), an experiment to search for a hidden sector photon in fixed target electroproduction, is preparing for installation at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) in the Fall of 2014. As the first stage of this project, the HPS Test Run apparatus was constructed and operated in 2012 to demonstrate the experiment׳s technical feasibility and to confirm that the trigger rates and occupancies are as expected. This paper describes the HPS Test Run apparatus and readout electronics and its performance. In this setting, a heavy photon can be identified as a narrow peak in the e+e− invariant mass spectrum above the trident background or as a narrow invariant mass peak with a decay vertex displaced from the production target, so charged particle tracking and vertexing are needed for its detection. In the HPS Test Run, charged particles are measured with a compact forward silicon microstrip tracker inside a dipole magnet. Electromagnetic showers are detected in a PbW04 crystal calorimeter situated behind the magnet, and are used to trigger the experiment and identify electrons and positrons. Both detectors are placed close to the beam line and split top-bottom. This arrangement provides sensitivity to low-mass heavy photons, allows clear passage of the unscattered beam, and avoids the spray of degraded electrons coming from the target. The discrimination between prompt and displaced e+e− pairs requires the first layer of silicon sensors be placed only 10 cm downstream of the target. The expected signal is small, and the trident background huge, so the experiment requires very large statistics. Accordingly, the HPS Test Run utilizes high-rate readout and data acquisition electronics and a fast trigger to exploit the essentially 100% duty cycle of the CEBAF accelerator at JLab