We report on the recent development of a versatile analog front-end compatible with a negative-ion μ-TPC for a directional dark matter search as well as a dual-phase, next-generation O(10~kt) liquid argon TPC to study neutrino oscillations, nucleon decay, and astrophysical neutrinos. Although the operating conditions for negative-ion and liquid argon TPCs are quite different (room temperature \textit{vs.} ∼88~K operation, respectively), the readout electronics requirements are similar. Both require a wide-dynamic range up to 1600 fC, and less than 2000--5000 e− noise for a typical signal of 80 fC with a detector capacitance of Cdet≈300~pF. In order to fulfill such challenging requirements, a prototype ASIC was newly designed using 180-nm CMOS technology. Here, we report on the performance of this ASIC, including measurements of shaping time, dynamic range, and equivalent noise charge (ENC). We also demonstrate the first operation of this ASIC on a low-pressure negative-ion μ-TPC.
@article{arxiv.1901.02587,
title = {Prototype Analog Front-end for Negative-ion Gas and Dual-phase Liquid-Ar TPCs},
author = {Miki Nakazawa and Tetsuichi Kishishita and Masayoshi Shoji and Ken Sakashita and Tomonori Ikeda and Hirohisa Ishiura and James B. R. Battat and Catherine Nicoloff and Manobu M. Tanaka and Takuya Hasegawa and Kentaro Miuchi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.02587},
year = {2019}
}