Proton Calorimetry/Meetings/2017/07/05

Minutes for UCL Proton Calorimetry Meeting, 5th July 2017 (D17, Physics & Astronomy, UCL)

Present

Simon Jolly, Anastasia Basharina-Freshville, Jordan Silverman, Dan Walker

ABF:

• Running preliminary tests with photodiode circuit using Hamamatsu preamp.
• Hamamatsu finally provided correct resistor for preamp! 100 kΩ.
• Looking after summer students for Monday–Wednesday next week (Laurent Wednesday).
• Still waiting for response from Hamamatsu regarding low gain PMTs; modified PMTs and bases not yet arrived.
• Will chase up 10 mm sheets from Nuvia.

JS:

• Looking at Geant4 simulations: been poking around on plus1...
• Struggling with Geant4 tutorials...
• Will look into updating background information on PBTWiki (with DW).

DW:

• Reading through MSci reports (mainly Adam Knoetze and Andreas Christou).
• Looking at Adnreas' Java code to read out LeCroy scope binary files.
• Also comparing Matlab script from LeCroy.

SJ:

• Next stage beyond WEPL fast QA device is fast treatment plan verification:
  • Tracking layer measures individual spot profile in 2D.
  • Calorimeter measures longitudinal dose deposition profile.
  • Reconstruct both spot by spot to give 3D dose distribution for each pencil beam spot.
  • Build up 3D dose distribution using information from each spot.
• Tony Price and Phil Allport at Birmingham has £20k from STFC Network+ (Karen Kirkby) to build prototype:
  • Take PRaVDA single tracking layer.
  • Measure position of 1 proton at a time at ~1 kHz.
  • Also measure proton energy with single module calorimeter.
  • Time acquisition such that we know position and energy of each proton.
• This requires timing together PRaVDA tracking with our calorimetry:
  • PRaVDA uses 26 MHz(?) clock (synced to iTHEMBA cyclotron frequency) with 1 "frame" per clock cycle.
  • PRaVDA DAQ built by ASPECT: will provide timestamped "event" with proton location.
  • Can use PRaVDA tracker to trigger our calorimeter DAQ: probably use scope.
  • Need to read out header from scope binary file to get precise trigger information.
• Future detector will need better DAQ:
  • Matt Wing has suggested using EUDAQ generic detector DAQ as software back end.
  • EUDAQ also includes Bristol Trigger Logic Units (TLUs) to aggregate digitised data and create an "event".
  • MW has offered some of Sohail Amjad's time to work on proton calorimetry DAQ.
• DW will look into LeCroy scope binary files to see if we can get rudimentary trigger information to link with PRaVDA tracker events.