A thermal bonding method for manufacturing Micromegas detectors

For manufacturing Micromegas detectors, the "bulk" method based on photoetching, was successfully developed and widely used in nuclear and particle physics experiments. However, the complexity of the method requires a considerable number of advanced instruments and processing, limiting the accessibility of this method for production of Micromegas detectors. In view of these limitations with the bulk method, a new method based on thermal bonding technique (TBM) has been developed to manufacture Micromegas detectors in a much simplified and efficient way without etching. This paper describes the TBM in detail and presents performance of the Micromegas detectors built with the TBM. The effectiveness of this method was investigated by testing Micromegas detector prototypes built with the method. Both X-rays and electron beams were used to characterize the prototypes in a gas mixture of argon and CO2 (7%). A typical energy resolution of ~16% (full width at half maximum, FWHM) and an absolute gain greater than 10^4 were obtained with 5.9 keV X-rays. Detection efficiency greater than 98% and a spatial resolution of ~65 {\mu}m were achieved using a 5 GeV electron beam at the DESY test-beam facility. The gas gain of a Micromegas detector could reach up to 10^5 with a uniformity of better than 10% when the size of the avalanche gap was optimized thanks to the flexibility of the TBM in defining the gap. Additionally, the TBM facilitates the exploration of new detector structures based on Micromegas owing to the much-simplified operation with the method.Comment: 15 pages, 17 figure

Study of residual artificial neural network for particle identification in the CEPC high-granularity calorimeter prototype

Particle Identification (PID) plays a central role in associating the energy depositions in calorimeter cells with the type of primary particle in a particle flow oriented detector system. In this paper, we propose novel PID methods based on the Residual Network (ResNet) architecture which enable the training of very deep networks, bypass the need to reconstruct feature variables, and ensure the generalization ability among various geometries of detectors, to classify electromagnetic showers and hadronic showers. Using Geant4 simulation samples with energy ranging from 5 GeV to 120 GeV, the efficacy of Residual Connections is validated and the performance of our model is compared with Boosted Decision Trees (BDT) and other pioneering Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approaches. In shower classification, we observe an improvement in background rejection over a wide range of high signal efficiency ($> 95\%$). These findings highlight the prospects of ANN with Residual Blocks for imaging detectors in the PID task of particle physics experiments

A large area, high counting rate micromegas-based neutron detector for BNCT

Beam monitoring and evaluation are very important to boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT), and a variety of detectors have been developed for these applications. However, most of the detectors used in BNCT only have a small detection area, leading to the inconvenience of the full-scale 2-D measurement of the beam. Based on micromegas technology, we designed a neutron detector with large detection area and high counting rate. This detector has a detection area of 288 mm multiples 288 mm and can measure thermal, epithermal, and fast neutrons with different detector settings. The BNCT experiments demonstrated that this detector has a very good 2-D imaging performance for the thermal, epithermal, fast neutron and gamma components, a highest counting rate of 94 kHz/channel, and a good linearity response to the beam power. Additionally, the flux fraction of each component can be calculated based on the measurement results. The Am-Be neutron source experiment indicates that this detector has a spatial resolution of approximately 1.4 mm, meeting the requirements of applications in BNCT. It is evident that this micromegas-based neutron detector with a large area and high counting rate capability has great development prospects in BNCT beam monitoring and evaluation applications

A large area 100 channel Picosec Micromegas detector with sub 20 ps time resolution

The PICOSEC Micromegas precise timing detector is based on a Cherenkov radiator coupled to a semi-transparent photocathode and a Micromegas amplification structure. The first proof of concept single-channel small area prototype was able to achieve time resolution below 25 ps. One of the crucial aspects in the development of the precise timing gaseous detectors applicable in high-energy physics experiments is a modular design that enables large area coverage. The first 19-channel multi-pad prototype with an active area of approximately 10 cm$^2$ suffered from degraded timing resolution due to the non-uniformity of the preamplification gap. A new 100 cm$^2$ detector module with 100 channels based on a rigid hybrid ceramic/FR4 Micromegas board for improved drift gap uniformity was developed. Initial measurements with 80 GeV/c muons showed improvements in timing response over measured pads and a time resolution below 25 ps. More recent measurements with a new thinner drift gap detector module and newly developed RF pulse amplifiers show that the resolution can be enhanced to a level of 17~ps. This work will present the development of the detector from structural simulations, design, and beam test commissioning with a focus on the timing performance of a thinner drift gap detector module in combination with new electronics using an automated timing scan method

Towards robust PICOSEC Micromegas precise timing detectors

The PICOSEC Micromegas (MM) detector is a precise timing gaseous detector consisting of a Cherenkov radiator combined with a photocathode and a MM amplifying structure. A 100-channel non-resistive PICOSEC MM prototype with 10x10 cm^2 active area equipped with a Cesium Iodide (CsI) photocathode demonstrated a time resolution below 18 ps. The objective of this work is to improve the PICOSEC MM detector robustness aspects; i.e. integration of resistive MM and carbon-based photocathodes; while maintaining good time resolution. The PICOSEC MM prototypes have been tested in laboratory conditions and successfully characterised with 150 GeV/c muon beams at the CERN SPS H4 beam line. The excellent timing performance below 20 ps for an individual pad obtained with the 10x10 cm^2 area resistive PICOSEC MM of 20 MOhm/sq showed no significant time resolution degradation as a result of adding a resistive layer. A single-pad prototype equipped with a 12 nm thick Boron Carbide (B4C) photocathode presented a time resolution below 35 ps; opening up new possibilities for detectors with robust photocathodes. The results made the concept more suitable for the experiments in need of robust detectors with good time resolution