Design of Prototype Front-end Digital Module for Direct Dark Matter Detection based on LAr

TL;DR

This paper presents the design and testing of a prototype front-end digital module for a liquid argon dark matter detector, featuring high-resolution digitization and successful lab and detector tests.

Contribution

It introduces a novel front-end digital module with 14-bit 1-GSPS ADC for LAr dark matter detection, demonstrating its performance in lab and detector environments.

Findings

Prototype FDM achieved ENOB of 10.40 bits at 298 MHz

Successful lab and detector tests validate the design

High dynamic range and resolution enable effective scintillation readout

Abstract

Liquid argon (LAr) with a high light yield of approximately 40 photons per keV is an attractive target for the direct detection of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which are well motivated galactic dark matter candidates. We studies a front-end electronics design for a LAr dark matter detector with the scintillation read out by PMT, which has an input dynamic range from 5pC to 1nC, and high resolution that single photoelectron can be distinguished. In this paper, we present the design of front-end digital module (FDM) which is the important portion of electronics. The prototype FDM is equipped with 14-bit 1-GSPS analog-to-digital converters (ADC), and the performance of prototype FDM had been test in lab (e.g. ENOB is 10.40 bits @298 MHz). Moreover, this prototype FDM had been tested with LAr detector collaboratively and test results are also presented.