Multiple-photon disambiguation on stripline-anode Micro-Channel Plates

TL;DR

This paper addresses the challenge of disambiguating multiple photon detections in large-area MCP-based detectors with stripline anodes, proposing a maximum a posteriori method verified through simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel maximum a posteriori approach for multiple-photon disambiguation in stripline-anode MCPs, enhancing photon event reconstruction accuracy.

Findings

Effective disambiguation demonstrated in simulations

Improved timing and position reconstruction accuracy

Potential for scaling to larger detector areas

Abstract

Large-Area Picosecond Photo-Detectors (LAPPDs) show great potential for expanding the performance envelope of Micro-Channel Plates (MCPs) to areas of up to 20 x 20 cm and larger. Such scaling introduces new challenges, including how to meet the electronics readout burden of ever larger area MCPs. One solution is to replace the traditional grid anode used for readout with a microwave stripline anode, thus allowing the channel count to scale with MCP width rather than area. However, stripline anodes introduce new issues not commonly dealt with in grid-anodes, especially as their length increases. One of these issues is the near simultaneous arrival of multiple photons on the detector, creating possible confusion about how to reconstruct their arrival times and positions. We propose a maximum a posteriori solution to the problem and verify its performance in simulated scintillator and water-Cherenkov detectors.