Front-end electronic readout system for the Belle II imaging Time-Of-Propagation detector

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel front-end electronic system designed for the Belle II Time-Of-Propagation detector, enabling precise photon timing and efficient data acquisition for particle identification.

Contribution

It introduces a new integrated electronic system with waveform sampling and data transfer capabilities tailored for the detector's high channel count.

Findings

Achieved single photon timing resolution below 100 ps

Successfully integrated 8192 channels with waveform sampling

Enhanced data acquisition efficiency for particle identification

Abstract

The Time-Of-Propagation detector is a Cherenkov particle identification detector based on quartz radiator bars for the Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB electron-positron collider. The purpose of the detector is to identify the type of charged hadrons produced in electron-positron collisions, and requires a single photon timing resolution below 100 picoseconds. A novel front-end electronic system was designed, built, and integrated to acquire data from the 8192 microchannel plate photomultiplier tube channels in the detector. Waveform sampling of these analog signals is done by switched-capacitor array application-specific integrated circuits. The processes of triggering, digitization of windows of interest, readout, and data transfer to the Belle II data acquisition system are managed by Xilinx Zynq-7000 programmable system on a chip devices.