Resistive or capacitive charge-division readout for position-sensitive detectors

Two-point charge division is a typical technique for position measurements in linear multi electrode detectors (microstrips, multiwire proportional counters, silicon drift-detector arrays, and scintillators coupled to photodetectors). Only two preamplifiers, located at the right and the left ends of the detection array, are used, each of which receives a fraction of the charge produced by the ionizing event. Position is reconstructed comparing these charge fractions. In principle, either a resistive or a capacitive divider may be used to split the charge. The choice between such two different setups is not obvious. In fact, each of them shows advantages and disadvantages in terms of noise, signal propagation, and linearity. In this paper, we present a unified treatment for the capacitive and the resistive mechanisms of charge division that addresses the issues of this choice. As an example, the realistic setup of the multiwire position-sensitive proportional counter to be used in the TP-MUSIC III chamber of the ALADiN experiment at GSI is considered.