Design and implementation of a time measurement system for Micromegas detector based on the TPC-like method

Abstract

The Micromegas detector is widely used in particle physics experiments due to its high count rate, good spatial resolution and other characteristics. In this article, we developed a drift time measurement system to reconstruct the hit position through the μTPC method. Our system is expected to run on a 768-channel prototype Micromegas detector being developed at the University of Science and Technology of China. It consists of two main parts: the data collection board receiving the trigger signal from the trigger detector to record the trigger time and the front end electronics receiving hit signals from the Micromegas detector to record the stop drift time of the ionized electrons through the VMM3 chip module. The electronics test results show that the system can measure time with a resolution of less than 1 ns. With this system, it is possible to reconstruct hit positions with large incident angles (for angles above 15̂) in a Micromegas detector through the μTPC method more accurately than through the charge centroid method.