Pickup and interference in particle astrophysics experiments: techniques and tools

TL;DR

This paper discusses techniques and tools for assessing and mitigating pickup and interference in particle astrophysics experiments, focusing on a simple, low-cost pick-off circuit for transient detection and interference identification.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, easy-to-build pick-off circuit for detecting AC power-line transients, aiding in interference suppression in astrophysics experiments.

Findings

The circuit effectively detects power-line transients.

It allows for time-domain assessment of mitigation techniques.

The approach enhances data integrity by identifying interference events.

Abstract

Contamination of signals by pickup and interference is a recurrent problem in physics experiments, the suppression of which consumes much time and effort. Techniques are presented which allow the time-domain assessment of mitigation techniques. A pick-off circuit is presented which facilitates the investigation of AC power-line borne transients without danger to the experimenter or damage to oscilloscopes. The circuit is simple to construct and low-cost. The output of this circuit may be used to veto or identify interference produced events so that they are not subsequently included in analysis.