The NA62 LAV front-end electronics

TL;DR

This paper presents the design and testing of the custom front-end electronics for the NA62 Large-Angle Veto detectors, crucial for background rejection in rare kaon decay measurements, achieving precise timing and energy resolution.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel readout board using time-over-threshold discrimination and TDCs, optimized for large-area veto detectors in high-energy physics experiments.

Findings

Successfully tested at CERN with the ANTI-A2 veto module

Achieved sub-nanosecond timing resolution

Demonstrated effective energy measurement over a large dynamic range

Abstract

The branching ratio for the decay $K^+ \to \pi^+\nu\bar{\nu}$ is sensitive to new physics; the NA62 experiment will measure it to within about 10%. To reject the dominant background from channels with final state photons, the large-angle vetoes (LAVs) must detect particles with better than 1 ns time resolution and 10% energy resolution over a very large energy range. Our custom readout board uses a time-over-threshold discriminator coupled to a TDC as a straightforward solution to satisfy these requirements. A prototype of the readout system was extensively tested together with the ANTI-A2 large angle veto module at CERN in summer 2010.