Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik Abteilung Astronomie Sand 1, D-72076 Tübingen, Germany

Preprint 02/14

Low Power Readout Electronics for a UV MCP Detector with Cross Strip Anode

M. Pfeifer, S. Diebold, J. Barnstedt, S. Hermanutz, C. Kalkuhl, N. Kappelmann, T. Schanz, K. Werner

Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics Tübingen, Kepler Center for Astro and Particle Physics

To be published in: JINST, Proceedings of IWORID 2013

Abstract. After the shutdown of the Hubble Space Telescope in a few years, new astronomical missions for the ultraviolet (UV) wavelength range between 91 and 300nm with improved optics and detectors will be necessary. This fact drives our development of solar blind photon counting microchannel plate (MCP) UV detectors with high quantum efficiency, high spatial resolution, and low power readout electronics. We plan to use a cross-strip anode (XSA), which has a high spatial resolution and additionally allows a low gain operation of the MCPs which leads to an increased lifetime of the MCPs compared to detectors with other anode types. The main difficulty in implementing an XSA in a detector for space applications is the need for a (pre-) amplifier, a shaper, and an ADC for each of the strips, which means large power consumption and spatial requirements. The solution we are studying is the application of the so-called Beetle chip. This allows for an implementation of a readout electronics for a XSA with a power consumption of less then 10W. For the tests of our readout electronics prototype, and for the burn-in of the MCPs, we recently finished a setup in a vacuum chamber that is similar to the configuration in the final detector. We present a brief overview of our detector design and details of the readout electronics setup as well as details of the setup in our vacuum chamber.
 
Key words: Detectors for UV, visible and IR photons; Data acquisition concepts; Front-end electronics for detector readout

Preprint (8,60 Mb PDF file including figures)

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