109494522
Design, realization and test of a rad-hard 2D-compressor and packing chip for high energy physics experiments
CARLOSv3 is a third version of a chip that plays a significant role in the data acquisition chain of the A Large Ion Collider Experiment Inner Tracking System experiment. It has been designed and realized with a 0.25 μm CMOS 3-metal rad-hard digital library. The chip elaborates and compresses, by means of a bi-dimensional compressor, data belonging to a so-called event. The compressor looks for cross-shaped clusters within the whole data set coming from the silicon detector. To test the chip a specific PCB has been designed; it contains the connectors for probing the ASIC with a pattern generator and a logic state analyzer. The chip is inserted on the PCB using a ZIF socket. This allows to test the 35 packaged samples out of the total amount of bare chips we have from the foundry. The test phase has shown that 32 out of 35 chips under test work well. It is planned to redesign a new version of the chip by adding extra features and to submit the final version of CARLOS upon the final DAQ chain will be totally tested both in Bologna and at CERN.
46500747
Implementation of a bidimensional compressor for a high-energy physics experiment
CARLOSv3 is the third version of a chip that plays a significant role in the data acquisition chain of the A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE) silicon drift detector (SDD). ALICE is one of the foremost high-energy physics experiments (HEPE) conducted within the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva. CARLOSv3 was principally designed and built for the on-line compression of the input dataset originating from a physical bidimensional silicon sensor. To compress a bidimensional dataset, a bidimensional data compressor was required. The compressor was designed for the ALICE SDD Experiment but could be applied to all experiments in which an incoming stream dataset originates from a bidimensional sensor.
108906869
Development of a triple well CMOS MAPS device with in-pixel signal processing and sparsified readout capabilities
Abstract The SLIM5 collaboration has designed, fabricated and tested several prototypes of CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS). The key feature of these devices, with respect to traditional MAPS is to include, at the pixel level, charge amplification and shaping and a first sparsification structure that interfaces with on-chip digital readout circuits. Via the 3-well option of the applied 0.13 μ m ST-Microelectronics CMOS technology each pixel includes a charge preamplifier, a shaper, a discriminator, an output latch, while retaining a fill factor of the sensitive area close to 90%. The last device of the family was submitted on Q4 2006 and the tests are ongoing. On this sensor, an on-chip, off-pixel digital readout block (streamout data sparsification) was added to implement, to control and to readout a test matrix built up of 4 × 4 pixels. It is aimed at proposing solutions that will overcome the readout speed limit of future large-matrix MAPS chips.
110590916
NEMO: Status of the Project
The activities towards the realisation of a km 3 Cherenkov neutrino detector, carried out by the NEMO Collaboration are described. Long term exploration of a 3500 m deep site close to the Sicilian coast has shown that it is optimal for the installation of the detector. A complete feasibility study, that has considered all the components of the detector as well as its deployment, has been carried out demonstrating that technological solutions exist for the realization of an underwater km 3 detector. The realization of a technological demonstrator (the NEMO Phase 1 project) is under way.
56367755
Design of an integrated particle detector-cell based on latchup effect
The paper describes an innovative idea for a silicon pixel detector. The principle is based on latchup effect that is common in to-date CMOS technologies working in a radiation environment. A prototype was constructed in the past with commercial components and here is described in detail an integrated version of the design. In principle the detector has low triggering and dead time, can operate at room temperature, does not require a high voltage power supply and is intrinsically tolerant to radiation. As a latchup-based detector can be constructed using state-of-the-art CMOS technologies, here it is presented a design of a prototype that will be implemented on a commercial 0.35 μm Bi-CMOS technology and tested at Electronics Department of Torino Politecnico.
120711647
A rad-hard 2D-compressor ASIC for ALICE SDD experiment
Abstract CARLOSv3 is a custom digital integrated circuit that plays a significant role in the data acquisition (DAQ) chain of the silicon drift detector (SDD) of a large ion collider experiment (ALICE). Each CARLOSv3 acts as a JTAG switch for front-end electronics and implements on-line two-dimensional (2D) data compression for two 8-bit DAQ channels handling the data streams delivered by the SDDs. The chip has been implemented using the 0.25 μm CMOS 3-metal CERN-developed digital library. It is composed of nearly 10k gates, has 88 user pads out of a total of 100 pads, has a die size of 4×4 mm 2 and is packaged in a CQFP100 ceramic package. In the paper, the chip is presented and described together with the 2D compression algorithm, the readout chain for ALICE SDD and the tests carried out.
15654508
Gravitational force distribution in fractal structures
We study the (Newtonian) gravitational force distribution arising from a fractal set of sources. We show that, in the case of real structures in finite samples, an important role is played by morphological properties and finite-size effects. For dimensions smaller than d − 1 (being d the space dimension) the convergence of the net gravitational force is assured by the fast decaying of the density, while for fractal dimension D > d − 1 the morphological properties of the structure determine the eventual convergence of the force as a function of distance. We clarify the role played by the cut-offs of the distribution. Some cosmological implications are discussed.
119113467
A Dynamical Classification of the Range of Pair Interactions
We formalize a classification of pair interactions based on the convergence properties of the forces acting on particles as a function of system size. We do so by considering the behavior of the probability distribution function (PDF) P(F) of the force field F in a particle distribution in the limit that the size of the system is taken to infinity at constant particle density, i.e., in the “usual” thermodynamic limit. For a pair interaction potential V(r) with V(r→∞)∼1/rγ defining a bounded pair force, we show that P(F) converges continuously to a well-defined and rapidly decreasing PDF if and only if the pair force is absolutely integrable, i.e., for γ>d−1, where d is the spatial dimension. We refer to this case as dynamically short-range, because the dominant contribution to the force on a typical particle in this limit arises from particles in a finite neighborhood around it. For the dynamically long-range case, i.e., γ≤d−1, on the other hand, the dominant contribution to the force comes from the mean field due to the bulk, which becomes undefined in this limit. We discuss also how, for γ≤d−1 (and notably, for the case of gravity, γ=d−2) P(F) may, in some cases, be defined in a weaker sense. This involves a regularization of the force summation which is generalization of the procedure employed to define gravitational forces in an infinite static homogeneous universe. We explain that the relevant classification in this context is, however, that which divides pair forces with γ>d−2 (or γ<d−2), for which the PDF of the difference in forces is defined (or not defined) in the infinite system limit, without any regularization. In the former case dynamics can, as for the (marginal) case of gravity, be defined consistently in an infinite uniform system.
15853720
Galaxy number counts and fractal correlations
We report the correlation analysis of various redshift surveys which shows that the available data are consistent with each other and manifest fractal correlations (with dimension D 2) up to the present observational limits ( ≈ 150 h−1Mpc) without any tendency towards homogenization. This result points to a new interpretation of the number counts that represents the main subject of this letter. We show that an analysis of the small-scale fluctuations allows us to reconcile the correlation analysis and the number counts in a new perspective which has a number of important implications.
1069360
Fluctuations in galaxy counts: A new test for homogeneity vs. fractality
Fractal properties are usually characterized by means of various statistical tools which deal with spatial average quantities. Here we focus on the determination of fluctuations around the average counts and we develop a test for the study of galaxy distribution both in redshift and magnitude space. Fluctuations in the counts of galaxies, in a fractal distribution, are of the same order of the average number at all scales as a function of redshift and magnitude. We point out that the study of these kinds of fluctuations can be a powerful test to understand the nature of galaxy clustering at very large scales.
14013791
Initial Conditions, Discreteness and Non-Linear Structure Formation in Cosmology
In this lecture we address three different but related aspects of the initial continuous fluctuation field in standard cosmological models. Firstly we discuss the properties of the so-called Harrison-Zeldovich like spectra. This power spectrum is a fundamental feature of all current standard cosmological models. In a simple classification of all stationary stochastic processes into three categories, we highlight with the name “super- homogeneous” the properties of the class to which models like this, with P(0) = 0, belong. In statistical physics language they are well described as glass-like. Secondly, the initial continuous density field with such small amplitude correlated Gaussian fluctuations must be discretised in order to set up the initial particle distribution used in gravitational N-body simulations. We discuss the main issues related to the effects of discretisation, particularly concerning the effect of particle induced fluctuations on the statistical properties of the initial conditions and on the dynamical evolution of gravitational clustering.