No Arabic abstract
Low Gain Avalanche Detector (LGAD) is the baseline sensing technology of the recently proposed Minimum Ionizing Particle (MIP) end-cap timing detectors (MTD) at the Atlas and CMS experiments. The current MTD sensor is designed as a multi-pad matrix detector delivering a poor position resolution, due to the relatively large pad area, around 1 $mm^2$; and a good timing resolution, around 20-30 ps. Besides, in his current technological incarnation, the timing resolution of the MTD LGAD sensors is severely degraded once the MIP particle hits the inter-pad region since the signal amplification is missing for this region. This limitation is named as the LGAD fill-factor problem. To overcome the fill factor problem and the poor position resolution of the MTD LGAD sensors, a p-in-p LGAD (iLGAD) was introduced. Contrary to the conventional LGAD, the iLGAD has a non-segmented deep p-well (the multiplication layer). Therefore, iLGADs should ideally present a constant gain value over all the sensitive region of the device without gain drops between the signal collecting electrodes; in other words, iLGADs should have a 100${%}$ fill-factor by design. In this paper, tracking and timing performance of the first iLGAD prototypes is presented.
Low Gain Avalanche Detectors (LGAD) are based on a n++-p+-p-p++ structure where an appropriate doping of the multiplication layer (p+) leads to high enough electric fields for impact ionization. Gain factors of few tens in charge significantly improve the resolution of timing measurements, particularly for thin detectors, where the timing performance was shown to be limited by Landau fluctuations. The main obstacle for their operation is the decrease of gain with irradiation, attributed to effective acceptor removal in the gain layer. Sets of thin sensors were produced by two different producers on different substrates, with different gain layer doping profiles and thicknesses (45, 50 and 80 um). Their performance in terms of gain/collected charge and leakage current was compared before and after irradiation with neutrons and pions up to the equivalent fluences of 5e15 cm-2. Transient Current Technique and charge collection measurements with LHC speed electronics were employed to characterize the detectors. The thin LGAD sensors were shown to perform much better than sensors of standard thickness (~300 um) and offer larger charge collection with respect to detectors without gain layer for fluences <2e15 cm-2. Larger initial gain prolongs the beneficial performance of LGADs. Pions were found to be more damaging than neutrons at the same equivalent fluence, while no significant difference was found between different producers. At very high fluences and bias voltages the gain appears due to deep acceptors in the bulk, hence also in thin standard detectors.
Several thin Low Gain Avalanche Detectors from Hamamatsu Photonics were irradiated with neutrons to different equivalent fluences up to $Phi_{eq}=3cdot10^{15}$ cm$^{-2}$. After the irradiation they were annealed at 60$^circ$C in steps to times $>20000$ minutes. Their properties, mainly full depletion voltage, gain layer depletion voltage, generation and leakage current, as well as their performance in terms of collected charge and time resolution, were determined between the steps. It was found that the effect of annealing on timing resolution and collected charge is not very large and mainly occurs within the first few tens of minutes. It is a consequence of active initial acceptor concentration decrease in the gain layer with time, where changes of around 10% were observed. For any relevant annealing times for detector operation the changes of effective doping concentration in the bulk negligibly influences the performance of the device, due to their small thickness and required high bias voltage operation. At very long annealing times the increase of the effective doping concentration in the bulk leads to a significant increase of the electric field in the gain layer and, by that, to the increase of gain at given voltage. The leakage current decreases in accordance with generation current annealing.
To meet the timing resolution requirement of up-coming High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), a new detector based on the Low-Gain Avalanche Detector(LGAD), High-Granularity Timing Detector (HGTD), is under intensive research in ATLAS. Two types of IHEP-NDL LGADs(BV60 and BV170) for this update is being developed by Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of Chinese Academic of Sciences (CAS) cooperated with Novel Device Laboratory (NDL) of Beijing Normal University and they are now under detailed study. These detectors are tested with $5GeV$ electron beam at DESY. A SiPM detector is chosen as a reference detector to get the timing resolution of LGADs. The fluctuation of time difference between LGAD and SiPM is extracted by fitting with a Gaussian function. Constant fraction discriminator (CFD) method is used to mitigate the effect of time walk. The timing resolution of $41 pm 1 ps$ and $63 pm 1 ps$ are obtained for BV60 and BV170 respectively.
Low Gain Avalanche Detector (LGAD) technology has been used to design and construct prototypes of time-zero detector for experiments utilizing proton and pion beams with High Acceptance Di-Electron Spectrometer (HADES) at GSI Darmstadt, Germany. LGAD properties have been studied with proton beams at the COoler SYnchrotron (COSY) facility in Julich, Germany. We have demonstrated that systems based on a prototype LGAD operated at room temperature and equipped with leading-edge discriminators reach a time precision below 50 ps. The application in the HADES, experimental conditions, as well as the test results obtained with proton beams are presented.
This paper presents results that take a critical step toward proving 10 ps timing resolutions feasibility for particle identification in the TOPSiDE detector concept for the Electron-Ion Collider. Measurements of LGADs with a thickness of 35 micro-m and 50 micro-m are evaluated with a 120 GeV proton beam. The performance of the gain and timing response is assessed, including the dependence on the reverse bias voltage and operating temperature. The best timing resolution of UFSDs in a test beam to date is achieved using three combined planes of 35 micro-m thick LGADs at -30 degree celsius with a precision of 14.3 ps (uncertainty 1.5 ps).