Development of readout architecture for ultra-high resolution radiation sensors
Student:
Supervisors: Gianluigi Casse (UoL), Nicola Massari (FBK), Eva Villella (UoL), Kurt Rinnert (UoL), Marco Cristoforetti (FBK)
Institution: University of Liverpool
Silicon sensors have been the key instrument for enabling all the great discoveries at particle accelerators over the last few decades. Their technology has evolved hugely since their introduction in particle physics experiments over 40 years ago, but it is now slowing down because of fundamental aspects related to their design. An entirely new approach has been proposed by Liverpool scientists to produce devices with more than two orders of magnitude improvement in their resolution. This would lead to unprecedented performance for this type of sensor and open an enormous field of applications, firstly in high energy physics but also in other areas of science. The working principle of these devices has been demonstrated, and future improvements will require detailed simulations, electronics design and characterization.
Moreover, the extremely small pixel sizes lead to arrays of large numbers of individual sensitive cells (with 3 or more orders of magnitude density increase with respect to the pixel sensors currently used in the particle physics experiments at the LHC at CERN). This implies a very large data mass per event and no standard method offers any viable solution for efficient data extraction, compression, storage and analysis. The readout of such high pixel densities represents a major challenge that requires simulations into various operating scenarios, the development of new readout architectures and the application of new algorithmic approaches based on Machine Learning. The results can inform the design of the detector ASIC, as an efficient data acquisition scheme onboard the chip itself is essential for the success of the novel approach to high precision sensing. This project will be offered by the particle physics cluster in close collaboration with the microelectronics group of the Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) in Trento, Italy. The student will get the opportunity to spend around 21 months in each location. A 6-months industry placement will complement the comprehensive training offered by LIV.INNO.
The results of this study will give a substantial contribution not only to the implementation of data extraction from an extremely large array of pixels, but also to systems based on multiple arrays of sensors (like particle physics tracking detectors, imaging devices etc.).
The supervisory team will be constituted by detector scientists (Prof. G. Casse, Liverpool), microelectronics design experts (N. Massari, FBK and E. Vilella, Liverpool) and computing and analysis experts (K. Rinnert, Liverpool, M. Cristoforetti, FBK).