Utra-High Resolution Multi-Hit Time-to-Digital Converter

50231-98-I Utra-High Resolution Multi-Hit Time-to-Digital Converter--Hypres, Inc., 175 Clearbrook Road, , Elmsford, NY 10523-1109; (914) 592-1190 Dr. Alex Kirchenko, Principal Investigator Dr. Elie K. Track, Business Official DOE Grant No. DE-FG02-98ER82595 Amount: $74,932 Measuring the mass or energy of a particle by timing its flight path is a traditional technique in all branches of high energy physics research. Time-to-Digital Converters (TDCs) are used to measure time intervals, where the most critical parameter is the time resolution. The best commercially-available multi-hit TDCs have a 25 picosecond (ps) time resolution, which is not sufficient for a number of nuclear physics experiments. Since particle detectors work in liquid helium environments, room temperature interfaces to custom TDCs introduce uncertainties to the experimental data. This project will design and fabricate a TDC with a 2 ps time resolution and a 32-bit dynamic range. The TDC will consist of a digital counter for counting high-speed (up to 30 GHz) clock pulses as well as an analog prescaler capable of measuring the time interval within a clock period with up to a 1 ps resolution. The TDC integrated circuit will be produced with a VME bus interface. Phase I will design and carry out high-speed testing on an analog prescaler. The anticipated time resolution of this prescaler is 1 ps. The prescaler will be integrated, on a chip, with an existing all-digital multi-hit TDC. Thus, this project will demonstrate a single-channel ultra-high time resolution multi-hit TDC. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: The proposed TDC will provide unprecedented resolution and dynamic range, along with multi-hit capability while accommodating multiple channels for the efficient implementation of large nuclear physics systems. This TDC will also improve the performance of military emitter direction finding and commercial modulation domain instrumentation._