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. 2021 Jan 19;21(2):673.
doi: 10.3390/s21020673.

The Event Detection System in the NEXT-White Detector

Raúl Esteve Bosch  1 , José F Toledo Alarcón  1 , Vicente Herrero Bosch  1 , Ander Simón Estévez  2 , Francesc Monrabal Capilla  3   4 , Vicente Álvarez Puerta  1 , Javier Rodríguez Samaniego  1 , Marc Querol Segura  5 , Francisco Ballester Merelo  1
Affiliations

The Event Detection System in the NEXT-White Detector

Raúl Esteve Bosch et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

This article describes the event detection system of the NEXT-White detector, a 5 kg high pressure xenon TPC with electroluminescent amplification, located in the Laboratorio Subterráneo de Canfranc (LSC), Spain. The detector is based on a plane of photomultipliers (PMTs) for energy measurements and a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) tracking plane for offline topological event filtering. The event detection system, based on the SRS-ATCA data acquisition system developed in the framework of the CERN RD51 collaboration, has been designed to detect multiple events based on online PMT signal energy measurements and a coincidence-detection algorithm. Implemented on FPGA, the system has been successfully running and evolving during NEXT-White operation. The event detection system brings some relevant and new functionalities in the field. A distributed double event processor has been implemented to detect simultaneously two different types of events thus allowing simultaneous calibration and physics runs. This special feature provides constant monitoring of the detector conditions, being especially relevant to the lifetime and geometrical map computations which are needed to correct high-energy physics events. Other features, like primary scintillation event rejection, or a double buffer associated with the type of event being searched, help reduce the unnecessary data throughput thus minimizing dead time and improving trigger efficiency.

Keywords: FPGA; data acquisition circuits; trigger concepts; xenon TPC.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Schematic view of the NEXT-White Detector. Top right: Picture of the PMT sensors plane. Top left: Picture of the SiPM sensors plane. In the active volume of the TPC: Drawing with the principle of operation of the detector.
Figure 2
Figure 2
NEXT-White most common signal searches: (a) Online S1 signal search, with offline S2 signal search; (b) Online S2 signal search with offline S1 signal search. In both cases, a data acquisition window of 1300 µs and pre-trigger of 650 µs is applied.
Figure 3
Figure 3
NEXT-White Data Acquisition Hardware Architecture.
Figure 4
Figure 4
NEXT-DEMO trigger scheme.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Example of signal candidate generation. In red, the complete set of configuration parameters to generate an event candidate from a PMT signal. In blue, data estimated by the event processor over the reconstructed signal by the BLR algorithm.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Set of events with a different range of energies from RUN 8250. General configuration: Circular Buffer size of 1600 µs and pre-trigger of 800 µs. EVT1 type set for low energy: Maximum amplitude of 1000 ADC counts, minimum and maximum amplitude thresholds of 5000 and 50,000 sum of ADC counts, and minimum and maximum time thresholds of 2 and 40 µs. EVT2 type set for high energy: Maximum amplitude of 4095 ADC counts (maximum possible value), minimum and maximum amplitude thresholds of 50,000 and 16,777,215 (maximum possible value) sum of ADC counts, and minimum and maximum time thresholds of 2 and 600 µs.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Run 7979 83mKr energy deposition signal (S2) in PMT0 with possible false S1 signals after and before the S2 signal that could be set as possible event candidates.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Event Accept example in Double Searching Mode: Run 4405 electron like Type A signal followed by a Type B signal for PMT0, PMT1 and PMT2. Double Search configuration set: 625 µs Maximum Time Event A to B. Type A signal configuration set: 50 ns Coincidence Window (CWA) and 3 minimum number of PMT hits (NA). Type B signal configuration set: 1250 ns Coincidence Window (CWB) and 3 minimum number of PMT hits (NB).
Figure 9
Figure 9
System event detection and Multi-Hit Memory scheme and functionality example.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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