Photomultiplier pulse Read Out system for the preshower detector of the LHCb experiment

The second generation experiment for CP violation studies in B decays, LHCb, is a 20-m-long single-arm spectrometer to be installed on the future Large Hadron Collider at CERN. For its precision measurement purpose, it combines precise vertex location and particle identification, in addition to a performance trigger system able to cope with high flux. The first level of trigger is mainly based on the fast response of the calorimetric subsystem. Of major importance is the 6000 channels preshower detector that aims to validate the electromagnetic nature of calorimetric showers. It consists of two-radiation-length lead sheet in front of a scintillator plane. Scintillator signals are extracted from plastic cells using wavelength-shifting fibres coupled to multi-anode photomultiplier tubes. The preshower Read Out system has to cope with fluctuating photomultiplier pulses caused by small amounts of photoelectrons, in addition to strong constraints imposed by the 40 MHz LHC bunch-crossing frequency. A special Read Out electronics including perfect 40 MHz integrators able to shape fluctuating photomultiplier pulses has been designed, and successfully realized. The temporal shape of photomultiplier pulse and the upstream Read Out system for preshower are described in this document. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.