Actual Detector Research Articles

A cost-effective field-programmable-gate-array-based pulse processor for biomedical imaging applications

ObjectiveThis paper presents the design and evaluation of a cost-effective, high-spatial resolution, multichannel, field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based readout system for Positron Emission Tomography (PET) detectors suitable for clinical and pre-clinical work in cancer and other diseases. A key challenge in PET imaging is the precise measurement of the time of arrival and energy of gamma photons originating from positron annihilation, along with the position of interaction within the detector. These parameters enhance image quality by improving coincidence detection, excluding Compton-scattered photons, and improving system spatial resolution. We developed a 16-channel readout system using single silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) element readout for efficient and precise energy, time, and position measurements. Each channel incorporates an FPGA-based sigma-delta analog-to-digital converter (ΣΔ-ADC) and tapped delay line (TDL) based time-to-digital converter (TDC) for timing and energy estimation. Performance characterization of the system was performed through simulation, electronically generated waveform, and actual PET detector signals from three different single scintillation crystals of face dimensions 3 × 3 mm2 and depths of 5 and 20 mm coupled to a 3 × 3 mm2 SiPM. We also constructed and tested a modular PET detector with a 10x10 array of 1.2x1.2x14 mm³ LSO crystals coupled to a 4x4 SiPM array of 3 × 3 mm2 elements. Best energy resolution was 9.3% at the 511 KeV photopeak and best coincidence timing resolution (CTR) was 210 ± 3.5 ps. Our system balances cost-effectiveness with performance and contributes to developments in PET signal acquisition and detector technology.

Secondary source reconfiguration for a Westinghouse four-loop plant

An approach is described for estimating the excore source range detector count rate for several secondary neutron source configurations. A case in which a Westinghouse four-loop plant considered relocating the secondary source fuel assemblies and switching from secondary source fuel assemblies with six secondary source rods to assemblies with two or four secondary source rods is presented. The excore detector count rate is first estimated computationally, by modeling the secondary source fuel assemblies and excore detectors in MCNP and predicting the detector count rate based on detector sensitivity in cps/nv listed in the detector manual. Since the excore detector response can vary greatly from cycle to cycle even for equilibrium loading patterns due to variations in detector response, benchmarking to actual excore source range detector count rates is presented. A correction factor for each individual source range detector is determined from the benchmark, then applied in the prediction of excore source range detector count rate for the proposed two or four secondary source rod configurations. The approach presented in this paper could also be used to perform an engineering evaluation on the feasibility of elimination of secondary sources.

Upgrade of ATLAS hadronic Tile Calorimeter for the High Luminosity LHC

The Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) is the hadronic calorimeter covering the central region of the ATLAS experiment. The High-Luminosity phase of LHC, delivering five times the LHC nominal instantaneous luminosity, is expected to start in 2029. TileCal will require new electronics to meet the requirements of a 1 MHz trigger, higher ambient radiation, and to ensure better performance under high pile-up conditions. Both the on- and off-detector TileCal electronics will be replaced during the shutdown of 2026–2028. Approximately 10% of the PMTs, those reading out the most exposed cells, will be replaced. PMT signals from every TileCal cell will be digitized and sent directly to the back-end electronics, where the signals are reconstructed, stored, and sent to the first level of trigger at a rate of 40 MHz. This will provide better precision of the calorimeter signals used by the trigger system and will allow the development of more complex trigger algorithms. The modular front-end electronics feature radiation-tolerant components and redundant design to minimise single points of failure. The timing, control and communication interface with the off-detector electronics is implemented with modern Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and high speed fiber optic links running up to 9.6 Gb/s. The TileCal upgrade program has included extensive R&D and test beam studies. A Demonstrator module equipped with the new electronics but with reverse compatibility with the existing readout system was inserted in ATLAS in 2019 for testing in actual detector conditions. The status of the various components and the results of test-beam campaigns with the electronics prototypes will be discussed.

Lunar occultations events from the Earth–Moon equilateral Lagrangian point: simulations and scientific potential

ABSTRACT Recently, a novel idea has been proposed to use a spacecraft orbiting closely around the L4 or L5 Lagrangian points of the Earth–Moon system as a vantage location for astronomical observations under unique and advantageous conditions, e.g. to investigate the Solar corona or Kordylewski clouds. In this paper, we explore the scientific advantages of this configuration to observe lunar occultations. By using simulations based on actual orbital parameters and detector performance, we find that even a telescope as small as 10 cm in a L4 orbit would enable better light-curve sampling and higher angular resolution than from ground, and open up at the same time new spectral windows such as e.g. in the UV. We focus in particular on angular diameter measurements, which we find would be possible at the 100 $\mu$as level even at magnitudes normally considered faint in the context of ground-based LOs. Considerable benefits would also be afforded in the area of small separation binary objects, not just in terms of angular resolution but also by the capability of L4-based observations to repeat an LO scan of a source at multiple different position angles. Additional science cases would be made possible by the high time resolution intrinsic to the LO technique and the access to UV wavelengths. On-board data pipeline codes already exist, greatly simplifying the automatic pre-processing and the data transfer requirements.

M-TAG: A modular teaching-aid for Geant4

Geant4 is a versatile Monte Carlo radiation transport simulation toolkit with a steep learning curve. This work introduces a user-code called M-TAG (Modular Radiation Teaching-Aid for Geant4), built on top of Geant4. M-TAG is designed to help gradually introduce the Geant4 toolkit to new users.The goal of Geant4 is to record quantities from the simulated radiation as it is transported through geometries. M-TAG simplifies the inclusion of new geometric elements and detector components in the simulation by including new classes. M-TAG also provides basic validated examples for some common detector development tasks. Geant4 intercom modules, called messenger classes, manage these classes. To validate M-TAG, simulations were performed to calculate the range of positrons in water. One hundred million decays at the center of a water-filled sphere with a radius of 1 m were allowed for fluorine-18, carbon-11, oxygen-15 and gallium-68. These results were compared to literature values. An inexperienced Geant4 user was tasked with creating a simulation model for a plastic scintillator-based detector and conducting basic tests to assess the effectiveness of M-TAG as a teaching tool. The simulation involved calculating the dose to the detector's sensitive volume using a 2x2 cm planar monoenergetic photon source spanning energies from 20 to 100 keV. One billion particles were simulated twice: once with the actual detector geometry and once with the sensitive volume replaced by water. The validity of M-TAG was also verified by computing dose ratios and comparing them with mass-attenuation ratios obtained from NIST XCOM data sets.The mean positron travel distances were within the distribution of literature values. Simulated positron energy spectra means were within 1.8% of literature means. Simulated dose ratios agreed with literature values within uncertainties.We have developed and verified a modular Geant4 teaching aid called M-TAG. It was used to introduce a new user to Geant4, who used it to perform further validation simulations.

Extinction and attenuation by voids in absorbing host media.

Extinction and attenuation by particles in an absorbing host have suffered a long-lasting controversy, which has impeded the physical insights on the radiative transfer in the voids dispersed composite. In this paper, we outline the existing extinction definitions, including an equivalence theorem neglecting the host absorption, the near-field analytical definition neglecting the far-field effects, and the operational way which simulates the actual detector readings. It is shown that, under the independent scattering approximation, the generalized operational definition is equivalent to a recent effective medium method according to the rigorous theory of multiple scattering. Using this generalized extinction, we show the important influences of the host absorption on the void extinction. Specifically, at the void resonance, the extinction cross sections of the small voids can be positive, zero, and even negative, which is regulated quantitively by host absorption. Considering the voids in SiC or Ag, the intriguing properties are verified through the attenuation coefficient calculated by the Maxwell-Garnett effective medium theory. In contrast, the equivalent theorem cannot describe any void resonance structures in the absorbing media. Also, the near-field definition fails to generate negative extinction and cannot thus describe the diminished total absorption by the voids. Our results might provide a better understanding of complex scattering theory in absorbing media.

Direct measurement of electron drift parameters in pixelated cadmium zinc telluride semiconductor detectors

The single-polarity charge-sensing electrode is widely used in wide-bandgap room-temperature CdZnTe detectors; in such systems, the drift of electrons is the primary contribution to the induced signal at the anode. Thus, it is important to accurately evaluate the parameters that describe the electron transport properties because they affect the performance of detectors. This paper proposes a method to directly measure the electron mobility and their mean free drift time in a pixelated CdZnTe detector using a depth-sensitive technique. The presented method considers the effect of the nonideal weighting potential in an actual detector, which has not been accounted for in previously proposed methods. In addition, by fitting the cathode waveform to avoid the effect of the time–amplitude walk due to the trigger threshold, improved measurement accuracy of the electron drift parameters can be achieved.

Upgrade of ATLAS Hadronic Tile Calorimeter for the High Luminosity LHC

The Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) is a sampling hadron calorimeter covering the central region of the ATLAS experiment, with steel as absorber and plastic scintillators as active medium. The High Luminosity phase of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is expected to start in 2029 and five times the present instantaneous luminosity will be delivered by the machine. TileCal will require new electronics to meet the requirements of a 1 MHz trigger, to be robust against higher radiation level, and to ensure better performance under high pile-up conditions. Both the on- and off-detector TileCal electronics will be replaced during the shutdown of 2026-2028. PMT signals from every TileCal cell will be digitized and sent directly to the back-end electronics, where the signals are reconstructed, stored, and sent to the first level of trigger at a rate of 40 MHz. This will provide better precision of the calorimeter signals used by the trigger system and will allow the development of more complex trigger algorithms. The modular front-end electronics feature radiation-tolerant commercial off-the-shelf components and redundant design to minimise single points of failure. The timing, control and communication interface with the off-detector electronics is implemented with modern Field Programmable Gate Arrays and high speed fibre optic links running up to 9.6 Gb/s. The TileCal upgrade program has included extensive research and development studies, and test beam studies. A Demonstrator module with reverse compatibility with the existing system was inserted in ATLAS in August 2019 for testing in actual detector conditions. The ongoing developments for on- and off-detector systems, together with expected performance characteristics and results of test-beam campaigns with the electronics prototypes are discussed.

The HL-LHC Upgrade of the ATLAS hadronic Tile Calorimeter

The High-Luminosity phase of LHC, scheduled to begin in late 2027, will deliver up to ten times the LHC nominal instantaneous luminosity to the experiments. To ensure sound performance under the higher pile-up and radiation conditions, the ATLAS hadronic Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) will replace both the on- and off- detector electronics systems during the LHC long shutdown 3 (2025-2027). The upgraded front-end system will continuously digitize and read out shaped photomultiplier tube (PMT) signals from every TileCal cell at a rate of 40 MHz, transmitting them over high-speed fiber links to the new back-end electronics to be stored in latency pipelines and digitally summed to produce improved trigger tower data for the Level-1 trigger. The front-end electronics are based on radiation-qualified commercial components, and use extensive redundancy to minimize single point failures. The Tile upgrade program has undergone extensive R&D and beam tests, and a “demonstrator” module was installed on ATLAS in 2019 for integration and testing in the actual detector environment.

Upgrade of ATLAS Hadronic Tile Calorimeter for the High-Luminosity LHC

The Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) is a sampling hadronic calorimeter covering the central region of the ATLAS experiment, with steel as the absorber and plastic scintillators as the active medium. The High-Luminosity phase of the LHC, delivering five times the LHC’s nominal instantaneous luminosity, is expected to begin in 2029. TileCal will require new electronics to meet the requirements of a 1 MHz trigger, higher ambient radiation, and to ensure better performance under high pile-up conditions. Both the on- and off-detector TileCal electronics will be replaced during the shut-down of 2026–2028. The photomultiplier tube (PMT) signals from every TileCal cell will be digitized and sent directly to the back-end electronics, where the signals are reconstructed, stored, and sent to the first level of the trigger at a rate of 40 MHz. This will provide better precision in the calorimeter signals used by the trigger system and will allow the development of more complex trigger algorithms. The modular front-end electronics feature radiation-tolerant, commercial, off-the-shelf components and a redundant design to maintain system performance in case of single points of failure. The timing, control, and communication interface with the off-detector electronics is implemented with modern Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and high-speed fiber optic links running up to 9.6 Gb/s. The TileCal upgrade program has included extensive R&D and test beam studies. A Demonstrator module with reverse compatibility with respect to the existing system was inserted in ATLAS in August 2019 for testing in actual detector conditions. The ongoing developments for on- and off-detector systems, together with expected performance characteristics and results of test-beam campaigns with the electronics prototypes, will be discussed.

Implementation of the regularized Rudin-Osher-Fatemi denoising method in the coherent wave burst pipeline for gravitational-wave data analysis

The data collected by the current network of gravitational-wave detectors are largely dominated by instrumental noise. Total variation methods based on L1-norm minimization have recently been proposed as a powerful technique for noise removal in gravitational-wave data. In particular, the regularized Rudin-Osher-Fatemi (rROF) model has proven effective to denoise signals embedded in either simulated Gaussian noise or actual detector noise. Importing the rROF model to existing search pipelines seems therefore worth considering. In this paper, we discuss the implementation of two variants of the rROF algorithm as two separate plug-ins of the coherent Wave Burst (cWB) pipeline designed to conduct searches of unmodelled gravitational-wave burst sources. The first approach is based on a single-step rROF method and the second one employs an iterative rROF procedure. Both approaches are calibrated using actual gravitational-wave events from the first three observing runs of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration, namely GW1501914, GW151226, GW170817, and GW190521, encompassing different types of compact binary coalescences. Our analysis shows that the iterative version of the rROF denoising algorithm implemented in the cWB pipeline effectively eliminates noise while preserving the waveform signals intact. Therefore, the combined approach yields higher signal-to-noise values than those computed by the cWB pipeline without the rROF denoising step. The incorporation of the iterative rROF algorithm in the cWB pipeline might hence impact the detectability capabilities of the pipeline along with the inference of source properties.

Upgrade of ATLAS hadronic Tile Calorimeter for the High-Luminosity LHC

The Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) is a sampling hadronic calorimeter covering the central region of the ATLAS experiment, with steel as absorber and plastic scintillators as active medium. The High-Luminosity phase of LHC, delivering an instantaneous luminosity up to 7.5×1034 cm−2 s−1, is expected to begin in 2029. TileCal will require new electronics to meet the requirements of a 1 MHz trigger (calorimeter output rate), higher ambient radiation, and to ensure better performance under high pile-up conditions. Both the on- and off-detector TileCal electronics will be replaced during the shutdown of 2026–2028. The TileCal upgrade program has included extensive R&D and test beam studies. A Demonstrator module with reverse compatibility with the existing system was inserted in ATLAS in August 2019 for testing in actual detector conditions. The ongoing developments for on- and off-detector systems, together with expected performance characteristics and recent results of test-beam campaigns with the electronics prototypes will be discussed.

A Learning-Based Physical Model of Charge Transport in Room-Temperature Semiconductor Detectors

Room-temperature semiconductor radiation detectors (RTSDs) such as CdTe are becoming popular in computed tomography (CT) imaging. These detectors are often pixelated, requiring cumbersome postinteraction 3-D event reconstruction, which can benefit from detailed material characterization at the micron level. Transport properties and material defects with respect to electrons and holes are to be characterized, which is a labor-intensive process. Current state-of-the-art characterization is done either as a whole or at most pixel-by-pixel over the detector material. In this article, we propose a novel learning-based physical model to infer material properties at the microscopic level for RTSD. Our approach uses a novel physics-inspired learning model based on physical transport of charges with trapping centers for electrons and holes in the detector. The proposed model learns these material properties from known or measured input charges to the detector along with known or measured output signals and distributed charges in the bulk of the RTSD. The actual physical detector is divided into voxels in space and takes into account different material properties (such as drift, trapping, detrapping, and recombination) in each voxel as learnable model parameters. The model is based on a physics-inspired recurrent neural network model instead of traditional convolutional or fully connected networks. The advantage of our approach is the one-to-one relationship between the actual physical parameters of the voxels and learnable weights in the model, far fewer trainable parameters compared to traditional neural network approaches and less training time. The performance of our model has been evaluated on cadmium zinc telluride (CdZnTe), with voxels of three sizes, 25, 50, and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$100~ \mu{\mathrm {m}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, for single charge input as well as multiple charge inputs at different voxel positions. Our learning-based model provides material properties with higher spatial resolution and performs well in all scenarios and matches the actual physical parameters better than state-of-the-art classical approaches.

Correlation of gravitational wave background noises and statistical loss for angular averaged sensitivity curves

Gravitational wave backgrounds generate correlated noises to separated detectors. This correlation can induce statistical losses to actual detector networks, compared with idealized noise-independent networks. Assuming that the backgrounds are isotropic, we examine the statistical losses specifically for the angular averaged sensitivity curves, and derive simple expressions that depend on the overlap reduction functions and the strength of the background noises relative to the instrumental noises. For future triangular interferometers such as ET and LISA, we also discuss preferred network geometries to suppress the potential statistical losses.

Upgrade of the ATLAS Hadronic Tile Calorimeter for the High Luminosity LHC

The Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) is the hadronic calorimeter covering the central region of the ATLAS experiment. It is a scintillating plastic tiles and steel absorbers sampling calorimeter. The scintillators are read-out by wavelength shifting fibers coupled to photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). The TileCal response and its readout electronics are monitored to better than 1 $$\%$$ using radioactive source, laser and charge injection systems. The TileCal electronics will undergo major upgrades for the high luminosity phase of the LHC (HL-LHC), so that the system can cope with increased radiation and can meet the requirements of a 1-MHz trigger. Digitized signals from all PMTs are sent to the back-end electronics and to the first level of trigger at 40 MHz. This will provide better precision in the trigger system and will allow the development of more complex trigger algorithms. The TileCal upgrade program has included extensive R&D and test beam studies. A Demonstrator module was inserted in ATLAS in 2019 for testing in actual detector conditions. The main features of the TileCal upgrade program and results obtained from the Demonstrator tests are discussed.

Multi-mode Gaussian Modulated Continuous-Variable Measurement-Device-Independent Quantum Key Distribution

We propose a novel multi-mode Gaussian modulated continuous variable measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDI-CVQKD) protocol where Alice and Bob prepare independent and identically distributed Gaussian modulated coherent states in multiple independent modes respectively along with Charlie using a traditional noise homodyne detector to measure. Since it is completely handed over to an untrusted third party (Charlie) to measure, this protocol can effectively eliminate the defects of the actual detector. As well as, we also proved that the multi-mode MDI-CVQKD protocol can reduce electronic noise. The simulation results show that the multi-mode Gaussian modulated MDI-CVQKD protocol can indeed significantly improve the key rate of the original Gaussian modulated MDI-CVQKD protocol, and extend the maximum secure transmission distance of the secret key.

Field modeling of the fire dynamics as an answer to the question about the fire alarm performance

Introduction. The performance of a fire alarm needs to be analyzed to answer the question about its compliance with fire safety requirements. This type of research is frequently performed in the course of a forensic fire investigation. Therefore, it is necessary to identify conditions of fire escalation and safe evacuation of people to assess the fire alarm performance.Purposes and objectives. The purpose of this work is the numerical study of the impact, produced by mathematical models of combustion, characteristics of fire loads and locations of fire beds, on fire alarm performance. Methods. Fire dynamics was field modeled to achieve the goal of this research. The analysis of flame propagation was performed with regard for various fire bed locations to simulate the fire alarm operation.Results and discussion. The fulfillment of safe evacuation conditions for cases of irregular arrangement of smoke detectors was analyzed to develop and test the algorithm for the calculation of the evacuation start time. It is shown that the estimated time of fire detection depends on combustion models employed (their average or complex level), the size of the computational grid, fire load specifications and the location of the fire bed.Conclusions. It is shown that the results of the field modeling of fire propagation and detection time are influenced by combustion models used, fire load specifications and the location of the fire bed in relation to smoke detectors. If the fire alarm fails to perform its functions and, consequently, safe evacuation conditions are not fulfilled, it is necessary either to improve the combustion model or to compare the modeling results obtained for actual and standard smoke detector location patterns.

Upgrade of the ATLAS Hadronic Tile Calorimeter for the High Luminosity LHC

The ATLAS hadronic Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) will undergo major upgrades to the on- and off-detector electronics in preparation for the high luminosity programme of the LHC (HL-LHC) in 2026. The system will cope with the HL-LHC increased radiation levels and out-of-time pileup. The on-detector electronics of the upgraded system will continuously digitize and transmit all photomultiplier signals to the off-detector systems at a 40 MHz rate. The off-detector electronics will store the data in pipeline buffers, reconstruct cell energy, produce digital hadronic cell sums of various granularity and send it to the Level-0 calorimeter trigger system, finally read out selected events. The modular front-end electronics feature radiation-tolerant commercial off-the-shelf components and redundant design to minimise single points of failure. The timing, control and communication interface with the off-detector electronics is implemented with modern Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and high speed fibre optic links running up to 9.6 Gb/s. The TileCal upgrade program has included extensive R&D and test beam studies using the beams from the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) accelerator at CERN. A Demonstrator module equipped with the novel electronics for the HL-LHC upgrade and compatible with the existing ATLAS read-out chain inserted in ATLAS in August 2019 for testing in actual detector conditions. We present the status of the upgrade program, the results using muon, electron and hadron beams at various incident energies and impact angles collected in 2015-2018, combined results of Demonstrator tests and calibration runs to evaluate the readiness of the new design.

Numerical Simulation Research on Reflected Wave Characteristics of Oil and Gas Well Coupling

In order to analyse and identify the reflection morphology of the coupling reflected wave in the oil jacket annulus and to clarify the influences of different factors on the coupling reflection waveform, the COMSOL finite element analysis software is used to conduct a numerical simulation study on the above situation, and the response characteristics are obtained by calculation. In this paper, different signal sources are used to research the three-dimensional propagation characteristics of acoustic wave when it meets the coupling in the annular space. Numerical simulations are carried out for different coupling thicknesses, different coupling radii, and different oil casing annulus pressures to analyse their influences on the waveform of coupling wave. The results showed that when the polarity of the signal source was positive (negative), the coupling reflection signal was positive (negative) at first and then negative (positive). When the signal source is a positive-negative superimposed source, the first peak polarity of the coupling reflection signal is consistent with the signal source. The reflected signal is superimposed by the response generated by the positive and negative signal sources, respectively. With the increase of the coupling radius, the morphology of coupling wave remains unchanged while its reflected wave amplitude increases nonlinearly with the increase of the coupling radius; with the increase of the oil casing annulus pressure, the morphology of coupling wave does not change, but the amplitude of the reflected wave increases linearly with the increase of the pressure; as the thickness of the coupling increases, the peak-to-peak spacing of the coupling reflection wave becomes larger and the positive and negative peaks separate. The research results can provide theoretical basis and reference standards for the analysis of the characteristics of the signals received by the actual fluid level detector, the performance verification of the echo signal processing method and the correct identification of the dynamic fluid level position.

Prototyping of the trigger-matching software for the NA62 data acquisition upgrade

The NA62 experiment aims to precisely measure the rare kaon decay K+ → π+ ν ν̄. The data acquisition system must thus withstand a huge rate of signals produced in the particle detectors and reduce the flux of data through a multi-level trigger system. The actual detector readout is designed to buffer the data produced and send it out only when a trigger is received. This system has some drawbacks: buffering the data requires relatively complex electronics near the detector that is subject to single event upsets induced by radiation. Furthermore, the buffer memory is limited and the trigger response must arrive in a fixed amount of time. The new readout system will address those issues introducing a new readout board coupled with an external server to buffer the data. This paper describes the readout upgrade and reports a study on the trigger-matching software performances.