Jul 6 – 13, 2022
Bologna, Italy
Europe/Rome timezone

Building a nuclear physics lab in the 21st century

Jul 8, 2022, 7:05 PM
1h 25m
Bologna, Italy

Bologna, Italy

Palazzo della Cultura e dei Congressi
Poster Education and Outreach Poster Session

Speaker

Dr Stefano Carsi (Dipartimento di Scienza e Alta Tecnologia, Università degli Studi dell'Insubria, Como, Italy)

Description

For more than half a century, expensive and bulky modules (e.g. the standard NIM, Nuclear Instrumentation Modules) and electronic boards have been used in nuclear physics laboratory courses, in order to filter, shape and digitize the analog signals coming from particle detectors. Recently it has become technically possible to miniaturize these circuits within ASICs, but their high cost and specificity make them unsuitable in a didactic and general-purpose context.

In this contribution we present an innovative system for reading and processing the signals produced by radiation detectors, which is based on simple, cheap and versatile components. The system is based on the "Red Pitaya STEMlab 125-14" [1] a compact size board which implements: a CPU, a FPGA, a port for network connections (useful for remote access and control) and two 125 MS/s 14-bit digitizer channels. The software framework, necessary for the acquisition, processing, and storage of the signals, is based on the "abcd" [2] acquisition system.

This system was experimentally tested in the Nuclear Physics Laboratory course of the Bachelor’s Degree in Physics at the Insubria University, in Como (Italy). In particular, it was used to read the signals produced by a silicon photodiode and a LaBr$_3$ scintillator in alpha and gamma spectroscopy experiments.

The system performance resulted to be equivalent to the one obtained with the traditional VME spectroscopic system. The main advantages of this new approach concern the compactness, versatility, and low cost, making it ideal also for high school laboratories.

References:
[1] Red Pitaya STEMlab 125-14, URL: https://redpitaya.com/stemlab-125-14/
[2] C. L. Fontana, abcd github repository, URL: https://github.com/ec-jrc/abcd/

In-person participation Yes

Primary authors

Dr Stefano Carsi (Dipartimento di Scienza e Alta Tecnologia, Università degli Studi dell'Insubria, Como, Italy) Dr Luca Bomben (Dipartimento di Scienza e Alta Tecnologia, Università degli Studi dell'Insubria, Como, Italy - Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, sezione di Milano Bicocca, Milan, Italy) Dr Cristiano L. Fontana (European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Geel, Belgium) Dr Pietro Monti-Guarnieri (Dipartimento di Scienza e Alta Tecnologia, Università degli Studi dell'Insubria, Como, Italy - Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, sezione di Milano Bicocca, Milan, Italy) Prof. Michela Prest (Dipartimento di Scienza e Alta Tecnologia, Università degli Studi dell'Insubria, Como, Italy - Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, sezione di Milano Bicocca, Milan, Italy) Dr Federico Ronchetti (Dipartimento di Scienza e Alta Tecnologia, Università degli Studi dell'Insubria, Como, Italy - Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, sezione di Milano Bicocca, Milan, Italy) Dr Alessia Selmi (Dipartimento di Scienza e Alta Tecnologia, Università degli Studi dell'Insubria, Como, Italy - Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, sezione di Milano Bicocca, Milan, Italy) Dr Erik Vallazza (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, sezione di Milano Bicocca, Milan, Italy)

Presentation materials