The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory electronics chain

Author

Cowen, D.F. ; Ekenberg, T. ; Klein, J.R. ; Newcomer, F.M. ; Van Berg, R. ; Van de Water, R.G. ; Wittich, P. ; Biman, A. ; Stevenson, R.L.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Phys., Pennsylvania Univ., Philadelphia, PA, USA

Volume

42

Issue

4

fYear

1995

fDate

8/1/1995 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

925

Lastpage

932

Abstract

The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) is a second generation real time solar neutrino water Cherenkov detector using 1000 tonnes of D₂O viewed by almost 10000 photomultiplier tubes 20 cm in diameter. The electronics chain is required to provide deadtimeless sub-nanosecond time and charge measurement for photomultiplier pulses in the range of 1-1000 photoelectrons. While the solar neutrino event rate is very low, the electronics chain must handle background rates in excess of 1 kHz and burst rates in excess of 1 MHz. The electronics chain is implemented using three full custom integrated circuits and commercial ADCs, memory, and logic. The DAQ interface is VME compatible. We will briefly describe the SNO detector and then concentrate on the design of the electronic system including novel features of the DAQ and trigger paths

Keywords

Cherenkov counters; analogue-digital conversion; application specific integrated circuits; cosmic ray apparatus; data acquisition; nuclear electronics; signal processing; trigger circuits; ADC; Sudbury Neutrino Observatory; charge measurement; custom integrated circuits; data aquisition; deadtimeless; electronics chain; logic; memory; photomultiplier tubes; time measurement; trigger; water Cherenkov detector; Application specific integrated circuits; Charge measurement; Data acquisition; Detectors; Logic circuits; Neutrino sources; Observatories; Photomultipliers; Pulse measurements; Solar power generation;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9499

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/23.467769

Filename

467769