Shaping amplifiers

The TIARA team has experience with highly integrated NIM electronics that would be suitable for use with TIARA, namely the CAEN model N568B 16-channel shaping amplifiers. Four of these amplifiers (64 channels) can be operated in a single NIM bin. The shaping times are selectable remotely via a commercial CAENet control system, along with all other key parameters. These amplifiers have become widely used in nuclear physics laboratories in the UK and in France, ensuring that backup modules are implicitly available through negotiation with collaborators. It is normal for multidetector arrays to be built and operated with their own dedicated electronics and data acquisition systems, to ensure efficient and reliable operation and to allow flexible scheduling of experiments. As described below, it is proposed that TIARA be configured so that it can adapt easily into exisiting data acquisition systems as GANIL, but it remains vital that it has its own dedicated electronics that can be set up and optimised specifically for the TIARA detectors. A key feature of the amplifiers that have been selected for TIARA are that they can be used for different types of detectors, and in particular they can be used to take the gamma-ray signals if required. This will allow the array to be set up independently of any other system, for example the dedicated Exogam electronics. This will be advantageous for experiments using fragmentation beams, where it might be impractical to contemplate moving the Exogam electronics to the end of the LISE spectrometer line, for example. It would be possible to exploit a scheduling opportunity by instrumenting a gamma-cube of detectors using the TIARA amplifiers. In fact, successful experiments have already been performed at LISE using segmented Ge detectors with amplifiers of the design that has been selected for TIARA. In addition, of course, the amplifiers would be suitable for instrumenting other gamma-ray detectors for use with the array.