Digitized Waveform Processing for Fast Timing

TL;DR

This paper presents a framework for processing high-rate digitized waveforms from various fast timing sensors, achieving sub-40 picosecond resolution to address high-luminosity collider background challenges.

Contribution

It introduces tools for processing waveforms sampled from 40 MHz to 40 GHz, enabling precise timing measurements for different sensor technologies in high-rate environments.

Findings

Achieved timing resolutions of 3.6, 24, and 20 ps for different sensors.

Developed waveform processing tools for sampling rates from 40 MHz to 40 GHz.

Supported high-precision timing in high-luminosity collider experiments.

Abstract

The prospect of pileup induced backgrounds at the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) has stimulated intense interest in technology for charged particle timing at high rates\cite{challenge}. In this paper I report on a framework for fast timing sensor and related electronics development used primarily within the context of PICOSEC. Our collaboration accumulated a large ($\sim$fewTbyte) set of waveforms from timing sensors based on MicroChannel Plates(MCP), MicroPattern Gas Detectors(MPGD) and capacitive readout Avalanche Diodes (aka HFS) with typically 20-40 GSa/s waveform sampling. We have reported charged particle time resolutions of 3.6, 24 and 20 picoseconds, respectively for these sensors. In this paper I discuss some of the tools developed during this activity for the processing of waveforms digitized at sampling rates ranging from 40 MHz (ATLAS ZDC) to 40 GHz (PICOSEC).