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Varner, Gary

Publications and source records attributed to Varner, Gary.

Front-end electronic readout system for the Belle II imaging Time-Of-Propagation detector

The Time-Of-Propagation detector is a Cherenkov particle identification detector based on quartz radiator bars for the Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB ee collider. The purpose of the detector is to identify the type of charged hadrons produced in ee collisions, and requires a single photon timing resolution below 100 picoseconds. A novel front-end electronic system was designed, built, and integrated to acquire data from the 8192 microchannel plate photomultiplier tube channels in the detector. Waveform sampling of these analog signals is done by switched-capacitor array application-specific integrated circuits. The processes of triggering, digitization of windows of interest, readout, and data transfer to the Belle II data acquisition system are managed by Xilinx Zynq-7000 programmable system on a chip devices.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Free-electron laser inverse-Compton interaction x-ray source

Free-electron lasers (FEL) and synchrotron sources of high brilliance x-rays have been confirmed to be of tremendous value in basic and applied research. Inverse-Compton sources (ICS) can achieve brilliance matching the requirements of many applications pioneered at those FEL and synchrotron facilities—including phase contrast imaging, macromolecular x-ray crystallography, and x-ray microscopy—but with size, cost, and complexity compatible with a small laboratory. The free-electron laser inverse-Compton interaction compact x-ray source at the University of Hawaii at Manoa is a unique approach to an ICS which employs an FEL as the laser source. We have measured a total average flux of 3.0 × 10 5 photons / second with an average brilliance of 2.0 × 10 7 photons / s mm 2 mrad 2 0.1% of bandwidth (BW) with a peak energy of 10.9 keV from the source. While these results are modest in comparison to the standards set by other IC sources, upgrades to the system have the potential to increase the total average flux to 9.2 × 10 11 photons / second with an average brilliance of 1.9 × 10 12 photons / s mm 2 mrad 2 0.1% BW: comparing more favorably to other sources. We discuss the scientific program, the progress made in design and development, and the achievements of the source to date. We also outline future upgrades and integration needed to yield an enabling source for emerging high brilliance x-ray applications.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

X-Ray Monitor for SuperKEKB HER/LER to Monitor Vertical Beam Size Bunch-by-Bunch

The beginning of the period of performance for this grant began after we had designed a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) for biasing and transporting signals from a new, thin Silicon strip sensor made at the Stanford Nanofabrication facility. This complex PCB was manufactured in mid-2017, and then work began on a preamplifier design that would take signals from the sensor and provide sufficient gain while maintaining fidelity, in terms of noise figure and signal speed.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Borehole muography of subsurface reservoirs

Imaging subsurface rock formations or geological objects like oil and gas reservoirs, mineral deposits, cavities or even magmatic plumbing systems under active volcanoes has been for many years a major quest of geoscientists. Since these subsurface objects cannot be observed directly, different indirect methods have been developed. These methods are all based on variations of certain physical properties of the subsurface materials that can be detected from the ground surface or from boreholes. To determine the density distribution, a new imaging technique using cosmic-ray muon detectors deployed in a borehole has been developed and a first prototype of a borehole muon detector successfully tested. In addition to providing a static image of the subsurface density in three dimensions (or three-dimensional tomography), borehole muography can also inform on the variations of density with time, which recently became of major importance with the injection of large volumes of fluids, mainly water and CO2, in porous subsurface reservoirs (e.g. aquifer storage and recovery, wastewater disposal, enhanced oil recovery and carbon sequestration). This raises several concerns about the risk of leakage and the mechanical integrity of the reservoirs. Determining the field scale induced displacement of fluids by geophysical methods like muography is thus a priority.This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Cosmic-ray muography'.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

A novel muon detector for borehole density tomography

Muons can be used to image the density of materials through which they pass, including geological structures. Subsurface applications of the technology include tracking fluid migration during injection or production, with increasing concern regarding such timely issues as induced seismicity or chemical leakage into aquifers. Current density monitoring options include gravimetric data collection and active or passive seismic surveys. One alternative, or complement, to these methods is the development of a muon detector that is sufficiently compact and robust for deployment in a borehole. Such a muon detector can enable imaging of density structure to monitor small changes in density – a proxy for fluid migration – at depths up to 1500 m. Such a detector has been developed, and Monte Carlo modeling methods applied to simulate the anticipated detector response. Testing and measurements using a prototype detector in the laboratory and shallow underground laboratory demonstrated robust response. Lastly, a satisfactory comparison with a large drift tube-based muon detector is also presented.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

A 15GSa/s, 1.5GHz bandwidth waveform digitizing ASIC

The PSEC4 custom integrated circuit was designed for the recording of fast waveforms for use in large-area time-of-flight detector systems. The ASIC has been fabricated using the IBM-8RF 0.13 micron CMOS process. On each of 6 analog channels, PSEC4 employs a switched capacitor array (SCA) 256 samples deep, a ramp-compare ADC with 10.5 bits of DC dynamic range, and a serial data readout with the capability of region-of-interest windowing to reduce dead time. The sampling rate can be adjusted between 4 and 15 Gigasamples/second [GSa/s] on all channels and is servo-controlled on-chip with a low-jitter delay-locked loop (DLL). The input signals are passively coupled on-chip with a -3 dB analog bandwidth of 1.5 GHz. The power consumption in quiescent sampling mode is less than 50 mW/chip; at a sustained trigger and readout rate of 50 kHz the chip draws 100 mW. After fixed-pattern pedestal subtraction, the uncorrected integral non-linearity is 0.15% over an 750 mV dynamic range. With a linearity correction, a full 1 V signal voltage range is available.The sampling timebase has a fixed-pattern non-linearity with an RMS of 13%, which can be corrected for precision waveform feature extraction and timing.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗