Searches for Dark Matter with Superheated Liquid Techniques

This is a short review of the detectors based on the superheated liquid techniques, including continuously sensitive bubble chambers, superheated droplet detectors (SDD) and Geysers

A method for characterizing the stability of light sources

We describe a method for measuring small fluctuations in the intensity of a laser source with a resolution of 10⁻⁴. The current signal generated by a PIN diode is passed to a front-end electronics that discriminates the AC from the DC components, which are physically separated and propagated along circuit paths with different gains. The gain long the AC signal path is set one order of magnitude larger than that along the DC signal path in such a way to optimize the measurement dynamic range. We then derive the relative fluctuation signal by normalizing the input-referred AC signal component to its input-referred DC counterpart. In this way the fluctuation of the optical signal waveform relative to the mean power of the laser is obtained. A "Noise-Scattering-Pattern method" and a "Signal-Power-Spectrum method" are then used to analyze the intensity fluctuations from three different solid-state lasers. This is a powerful tool for the characterization of the intensity stability of lasers. Applications are discussed

Time-domain Simulation of electronic noises

In this paper, a procedure is proposed to computer simulate the electronic noise of ionizing-radiation spectrometers. The viewpoint of the simulator is the output of the preamplifier, with or without an anti-aliasing filter, just in front of the ADC. Examples are given for the case of segmented high purity Germanium detectors (HPGe). The method makes use of the fractional calculus basics. A software procedure provides the noisy waveform as a function of the fundamental electrical-physical parameters of the system, including: detector capacitance, detector leakage current, feedback resistor, 1/f-noise coefficient of the input transistor, temperature of the preamplifier input devices. The ADC quantization noise is also included in the simulation

Measurement of the power spectral density of noise produced by a large integrated feedback resistor for charge-sensitive preamplifiers

Charge-sensitive preamplifiers (CSP) require high-valued feedback resistors as continuous-time reset devices: higher resistance values correspond to lower current noise and better spectroscopic performances. Designing integrated multi-channel CSP such resistors are generally left as external components or substituted with active transconductors. The former are bulky and not adequate for situations where a high degree of integration is required, the latter generally suffer from linearity and noise problems. A possible solution could be the use of large integrated polysilicon resistors. These ones, however, suffer from a very high distributed capacitive coupling to bulk, which tends to turn such devices into transmission lines. Simple resistor models are no longer adequate to describe both the impedance and the noise generators of such integrated resistors. A closed-form model was developed which describes the current noise produced by a resistance with distributed capacitance. A 100 Mohm integrated polysilicon resistor was realized and the power spectral density of noise produced by this device has been measured connecting it as a feedback resistor to a low-noise charge-sensitive preamplifier

Performance of the Fully Digital FPGA-based Front-End Electronics for the GALILEO Array

In this work we present the architecture and results of a fully digital Front End Electronics (FEE) read out system developed for the GALILEO array. The FEE system, developed in collaboration with the Advanced Gamma Tracking Array (AGATA) collaboration, is composed of three main blocks: preamplifiers, digitizers and preprocessing electronics. The slow control system contains a custom Linux driver, a dynamic library and a server implementing network services. The digital processing of the data from the GALILEO germanium detectors has demonstrated the capability to achieve an energy resolution of 1.53 per mil at an energy of 1.33 MeV.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, preprint version of IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science paper submitted for the 19th IEEE Real Time Conferenc

A 102 dB dynamic-range charge-sampling readout for ionizing particle/radiation detectors based on an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)

An original technique for the measurement of charge signals from ionizing particle/radiation detectors has been implemented in an application-specific integrated circuit form. The device performs linear measurements of the charge both within and beyond its output voltage swing. The device features an unprecedented spectroscopic dynamic range of 102 dB and is suitable for high-resolution ion and X-\u3b3 ray spectroscopy. We believe that this approach may change a widespread paradigm according to which no high-resolution spectroscopy is possible when working close to or beyond the limit of the preamplifier's output voltage swing

An advanced preamplifier for highly segmented germanium detectors

We present a fast low-noise hybrid charge-sensitive preamplifier for germanium position-sensitive gamma-ray detectors. In conjunction with a bulky 36-fold segmented detector it provided an excellent resolution of 1.71/1.77 keV fwhm on the 1.17/1.33 MeV 60Co lines. The preamplifier rise time, as measured at the test bench, is as fast as 7.5 ns, with a detector capacitance of 21 pF and with a 5 m 50 ohm twisted-pair cable connected at its output. The dynamic range of the preamplifier input stage is as large as 92 dB, ranging from 0.275 fC to 9.9 pC, i.e., from 5 keV to 180 MeV in terms of photon energy. On signals larger than 2 MeV a fast reset (about 10 MeV/us) is enforced to reduce the system dead time. An estimate of the amplitude of such large signals is derived from the reset time, still obtaining a high resolution. Using this technique we achieved an energy resolution of 0.3% at 16.7 MeV

Measuring the complex field scattered by single submicron particles

We describe a method for simultaneous measurements of the real and imaginary parts of the field scattered by single nanoparticles illuminated by a laser beam, exploiting a self-reference interferometric scheme relying on the fundamentals of the Optical Theorem. Results obtained with calibrated spheres of different materials are compared to the expected values obtained through a simplified analytical model without any free parameters, and the method is applied to a highly polydisperse water suspension of Poly(D,L-lactide-co-glycolide) nanoparticles. Advantages with respect to existing methods and possible applications are discussed