Upgrading the Front-End Electronics of the Photon Spectrometer for the ALICE/CERN Experiment

The design of a prototype front-end card (FEC) of the ALICE/CERN photon spectrometer (PHOS) is described. The development of the new FEC is associated with an increase in the luminosity of the Large Hadron Collider beams and the need to improve the accuracy of time-of-flight measurements for better identification of detected particles. The available PHOS FEC does not meet the new requirements and must be replaced according to the PHOS upgrade plan. The improvement of the PHOS FEC measurement characteristics is achieved by measuring the flight time instead of processing the digitization codes of the photodetector waveform offline. The FEC prototype contains eight measuring channels and all the functional units needed for operation in the PHOS spectrometer. The functional units are described. The FEC prototype characteristics measured in the laboratory and on the electron component of secondary particle beams at the PS proton synchrotron (CERN) in the momentum range of 1−10 GeV/c are presented. Based on the results obtained, it is concluded that the FEC prototype fully meets the requirements for the FEC of the upgraded PHOS. Based on this design, the development of a full-scale PHOS FEC with 32 measuring channels has been started.