arXiv subjects

L. Ruckman

Publications and source records attributed to L. Ruckman.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The SPT-3G+ receiver design

We present the thermo-mechanical design of the cryostat and camera optics for SPT-3G+, a new receiver being developed for the South Pole Telescope (SPT). The receiver consists of 14 detector arrays of 90/150 GHz dichroic polarization-sensitive pixels, totaling 24,080 transition-edge sensor detectors. Each detector array lies at the end of an optics tube, each approximately 240 mm in diameter and 772 mm in length, which are arranged in a hexagonal close-packed configuration to achieve a 4 degree diameter field of view. Each optics tube contains four anti-reflection coated lenses fabricated from different materials (alumina, silicon, and nylon) that are designed to also provide infrared filtering that reduces the radiative loading on the cryogenic stages. The optics and detectors are cooled by a combination of a pulse tube cooler for the 40 K and 4 K stages, and a dilution refrigerator for the 1 K and 100 mK stages. Thermal modeling predicts the heat load to be less than 26 W and 1 W for the 40 K and 4 K stages, respectively. The 1,550 kg cryostat has a 1.1 meter diameter at the vacuum window, which is located near the telescope Gregorian focus, and 1.75 meters in height and length. Fabrication of the cryostat will begin in 2026, with installation on the SPT scheduled for the 2028-29 austral summer, ahead of the 2029 winter observing season.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2026

SPT-3G+: A Cosmic Microwave Background Experiment for the South Pole Telescope

SPT-3G+ is the next survey receiver planned to be installed in early 2029 on the 10-meter South Pole Telescope (SPT). This new receiver will feature 6,020 polarization-sensitive dichroic pixels with transition-edge sensors observing in frequency bands centered at 90 GHz and 150 GHz. The 24,080 detectors in the SPT-3G+ receiver will be cooled to 100 mK by a dilution refrigerator and read out using microwave SQUID multiplexing. The optical design of the receiver enables a 4 degree diameter field of view, which is broken up into 14 individual optics tubes each containing cryogenic alumina, silicon, and nylon lenses. These technology choices will allow the SPT-3G+ receiver to improve on the mapping speed of the currently operating SPT-3G receiver by nearly an order of magnitude. Once deployed, the SPT-3G+ receiver will observe for 6-years an area overlapping with the BICEP survey to achieve a combined (90 GHz and 150 GHz) CMB map depth of 0.5 uK-arcmin. Data from these observations will be used to create unprecedentedly deep CMB lensing maps, discover new galaxy clusters, and detect astrophysical transients. The lensing map produced by SPT-3G+ will be used to remove or "delens" foreground B modes, where large-scale structure gravitationally lenses the CMB and converts E modes into B-mode polarization, with the goal of revealing inflationary B modes. Together with data from the BICEP Array as part of the South Pole Observatory, SPT-3G+ data will be used to constrain the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ with a goal of achieving a measurement of $\sigma(r) = 0.001$

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Application of RFSoC Technology for Beam Position Monitors at the SuperKEKB Storage Rings Injection Points

In order to achieve its ambitious luminosity target, the SuperKEKB collider must achieve and sustain high beam currents on the order of Ampere in its storage rings. This requires continuous top-up injection and operation with a two-bunch injection scheme, injecting two 96 ns spaced bunches in a single injection cycle. An important input for tuning the injection beam is the position reading from a dedicated beam position monitor (BPM), located after the septum magnets, slightly upstream of where the injected and stored beams converge. Previously, the readout electronics used for these special BPMs were not capable of independent measurement of both bunches in the two-bunch injection mode and modification of the concerned devices and their firmware was not feasible. The opportunity was taken to develop a new readout device based on the AMD/Xilinx RF System on a Chip (RFSoC) platform with the goal of not only providing a sufficiently flexible and performant readout solution for the concerned BPMs, but also to evaluate and gain experience with the platform for beam monitor electronics applications. This paper is concerned with the details of this development as well as evaluation and operation of the developed device.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2025

A Compact Low-level RF Control System for Advanced Concept Compact Electron Linear Accelerator

A compact low-level RF (LLRF) control system based on RF system-on-chip (RFSoC) technology has been designed for the Advanced Concept Compact Electron Linear-accelerator (ACCEL) program, which has challenging requirements in both RF performance and size, weight and power consumption (SWaP). The compact LLRF solution employs the direct RF sampling technique of RFSoC, which samples the RF signals directly without any analogue up and down conversion. Compared with the conventional heterodyne based architecture used for LLRF system of linear accelerator (LINAC), the elimination of analogue mixers can significantly reduce the size and weight of the system, especially with LINAC requires a larger number of RF channels. Based on the requirements of ACCEL, a prototype LLRF platform has been developed, and the control schemes have been proposed. The prototype LLRF system demonstrated magnitude and phase fluctuation levels below 1% and 1 degree, on the flat top of a 2 microseconds RF pulse. The LLRF control schemes proposed for ACCEL are implemented with a prototype hardware platform. This paper will introduce the new compact LLRF solution and summarize a selection of experimental test results of the prototype itself and with the accelerating structure cavities designed for ACCEL.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2025

High-Power Test of a C-band Linear Accelerating Structure with an RFSoC-based LLRF System

Normal conducting linear particle accelerators consist of multiple rf stations with accelerating structure cavities. Low-level rf (LLRF) systems are employed to set the phase and amplitude of the field in the accelerating structure, and to compensate the pulse-to-pulse fluctuation of the rf field in the accelerating structures with a feedback loop. The LLRF systems are typically implemented with analogue rf mixers, heterodyne based architectures and discrete data converters. There are multiple rf signals from each of rf station, so the number of rf channels required increases rapidly with multiple rf stations. With many rf channels, the footprint, component cost and system complexity of the LLRF hardware increase significantly. To meet the design goals to be compact and affordable for future accelerators, we have designed the next generation LLRF (NG-LLRF) with higher integration level based on RFSoC technology. The NG-LLRF system samples rf signals directly and performs the rf mixing digitally. The NG-LLRF has been characterized in a loopback mode to evaluate the performance of the system and tested with a standing-wave accelerating structure, a prototype for the Cool Copper Collider (C3) with peak rf power up to 16.45 MW. The loopback test demonstrated amplitude fluctuation below 0.15% and phase fluctuation below 0.15 degree, which are considerably better than the requirements of C3. The rf signals from the different stages of accelerating structure at different power levels are measured by the NG-LLRF, which will be critical references for the control algorithm designs. The NG-LLRF also offers flexibility in waveform modulation, so we have used rf pulses with various modulation schemes which could be useful for controlling some of rf stations in accelerators. In this paper, the high-power test results at different stages of the test setup will be summarized, analyzed and discussed.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2024

Performance Evaluation of an RFSoC Operating in a 1.25 Tesla Magnetic Field

The Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB collider is preparing for an upgrade after 2027-2028 to handle higher luminosity and increased background rates. A Radio Frequency System-on-Chip (RFSoC) has been identified as a potential candidate for a common front-end upgrade for subsystems requiring high-speed waveform digitization. The RFSoC's ADC and DAC channels were tested across various magnetic field strengths and a few different field orientations. Power consumption and boot memory functionality were also assessed. Results indicate stable operation with negligible performance degradation, suggesting the RFSoC's viability for high-speed digitization tasks in high magnetic field environments.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2024

Direct RF Sampling based LLRF Control System for C-band Linear Accelerator

Low Level RF (LLRF) control systems of linear accelerators (LINACs) are typically implemented with heterodyne based architectures, which have complex analog RF mixers for up and down conversion. The Gen 3 Radio Frequency System-on-Chip (RFSoC) device from AMD Xilinx integrates data converters with maximum RF frequency of 6~GHz. This enables direct RF sampling of C-band LLRF signal typically operated at 5.712 GHz without any analogue mixers, which can significantly simplify the system architecture. The data converters sample RF signals in higher order Nyquist zones and then up or down convert digitally by the integrated data path in RFSoC. The closed-loop feedback control firmware implemented in FPGA integrated in RFSoC can process the base-band signal from the ADC data path and calculate the updated phase and amplitude to be up-mixed by the DAC data path. We have developed a C-band LLRF control RFSoC platform with direct RF sampling, which targets Cool Copper Collider (C3) and other C or S band LINAC research and development projects. In this paper, the architecture of the platform will be described. We have optimized the configuration of the data converter and characterized performance of them with RF pulses. The test results for some of the key performance parameters for the LLRF platform with our custom solid-state amplifier, such as phase and amplitude stability, will be discussed in this paper.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2023

LLRF System Considerations for a Compact, Commercial C-band Accelerator using the AMD Xilinx RF-SoC

This work describes the LLRF and control system in use for a novel accelerator structure developed for a compact design operating in C-band developed by SLAC, with collaboration from RadiaBeam and RadiaSoft. This design is a pulsed RF/pulsed beam system that only provides minimal monitoring for control of each two-cavity pair. Available signals include only a forward and reflected signal for each pair; such a design requires careful consideration of calibration and power-on routines, as well an understanding of how to correct for disturbances caused by the entire RF signal chain, including a new SSA, klystron, and distribution system. An AMD Xilinx RF-SoC with a separate supervisory computer is the LLRF system core, with on-board pulse-to-pulse feedback corrections. This work presents the current status of the project, as well as obstacles and manufacturing plans from the viewpoint of developing for larger-volume manufacturing. This material is based upon work supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under Contract Numbers 140D0423C0006 and 140D0423C0007. The views, opinions, and/or findings expressed are those of the author(s) and should not be interpreted as representing the official views or policies of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2023

Performance of a front-end prototype ASIC for the ATLAS High Granularity Timing Detector

This paper presents the design and characterisation of a front-end prototype ASIC for the ATLAS High Granularity Timing Detector, which is planned for the High-Luminosity phase of the LHC. This prototype, called ALTIROC1, consists of a 5$\times$5-pad matrix and contains the analog part of the single-channel readout (preamplifier, discriminator, two TDCs and SRAM). Two preamplifier architectures (transimpedance and voltage) were implemented and tested. The ASIC was characterised both alone and as a module when connected to a 5$\times$5-pad array of LGAD sensors. In calibration measurements, the ASIC operating alone was found to satisfy the technical requirements for the project, with similar performances for both preamplifier types. In particular, the jitter was found to be 15$\pm$1~ps (35$\pm$1~ps) for an injected charge of 10~fC (4~fC). A degradation in performance was observed when the ASIC was connected to the LGAD array. This is attributed to digital couplings at the entrance of the preamplifiers. When the ASIC is connected to the LGAD array, the lowest detectable charge increased from 1.5~fC to 3.4~fC. As a consequence, the jitter increased for an injected charge of 4~fC. Despite this increase, ALTIROC1 still satisfies the maximum jitter specification (below 65~ps) for the HGTD project. This coupling issue also affects the time over threshold measurements and the time-walk correction can only be performed with transimpedance preamplifiers. Beam test measurements with a pion beam at CERN were also undertaken to evaluate the performance of the module. The best time resolution obtained using only ALTIROC TDC data was 46.3$\pm$0.7~ps for a restricted time of arrival range where the coupling issue is minimized. The residual time-walk contribution is equal to 23~ps and is the dominant electronic noise contribution to the time resolution at 15~fC.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2022

100 Gb/s High Throughput Serial Protocol (HTSP) for Data Acquisition Systems with Interleaved Streaming

Demands on Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) data transport have been increasing over the years as frame sizes and refresh rates increase. As the bandwidths requirements increase the ability to implement data transport protocol layers using "soft" programmable logic becomes harder and start to require harden IP blocks implementation. To reduce the number of physical links and interconnects, it is common for data acquisition systems to require interleaving of streams on the same link (e.g. streaming data and streaming register access). This paper presents a way to leverage existing FPGA harden IP blocks to achieve a robust, low latency 100 Gb/s point-to-point link with minimal programmable logic overhead geared towards the needs of data acquisition systems with interleaved streaming requirements.

cs.AR↗

arXiv2021

A Microwave SQUID Multiplexer Optimized for Bolometric Applications

A microwave SQUID multiplexer ($μ$MUX) has been optimized for coupling to large arrays of superconducting transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers. We present the scalable cryogenic multiplexer chip design in a 1820-channel multiplexer configuration for the 4-8 GHz rf band. The key metrics of yield, sensitivity, and crosstalk are determined through measurements of 455 readout channels, which span 4-5 GHz. The median white-noise level is 45 pA/$\sqrt{\textrm{Hz}}$, evaluated at 2 Hz, with a 1/f knee $\leq$ 20 mHz after common-mode subtraction. The white-noise level decreases the sensitivity of a TES bolometer optimized for detection of the cosmic microwave background at 150 GHz by only 3%. The measured crosstalk between any channel pair is $\leq$ 0.3%.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2018

Upward-Pointing Cosmic-Ray-like Events Observed with ANITA

These proceedings address a recent publication by the ANITA collaboration of four upward- pointing cosmic-ray-like events observed in the first flight of ANITA. Three of these events were consistent with stratospheric cosmic-ray air showers where the axis of propagation does not inter- sect the surface of the Earth. The fourth event was consistent with a primary particle that emerges from the surface of the ice suggesting a possible τ-lepton decay as the origin of this event. These proceedings follow-up on the modeling and testing of the hypothesis that this event was of τ neutrino origin.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2016

Characteristics of Four Upward-pointing Cosmic-ray-like Events Observed with ANITA

We report on four radio-detected cosmic-ray (CR) or CR-like events observed with the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA), a NASA-sponsored long-duration balloon payload. Two of the four were previously identified as stratospheric CR air showers during the ANITA-I flight. A third stratospheric CR was detected during the ANITA-II flight. Here we report on characteristics these three unusual CR events, which develop nearly horizontally, 20-30~km above the surface of the Earth. In addition, we report on a fourth steeply upward-pointing ANITA-I CR-like radio event which has characteristics consistent with a primary that emerged from the surface of the ice. This suggests a possible $τ$-lepton decay as the origin of this event, but such an interpretation would require significant suppression of the Standard Model $τ$-neutrino cross section.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2016

Energy and Flux Measurements of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays Observed During the First ANITA Flight

The first flight of the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment recorded 16 radio signals that were emitted by cosmic-ray induced air showers. For 14 of these events, this radiation was reflected from the ice. The dominant contribution to the radiation from the deflection of positrons and electrons in the geomagnetic field, which is beamed in the direction of motion of the air shower. This radiation is reflected from the ice and subsequently detected by the ANITA experiment at a flight altitude of 36km. In this paper, we estimate the energy of the 14 individual events and find that the mean energy of the cosmic-ray sample is 2.9 EeV. By simulating the ANITA flight, we calculate its exposure for ultra-high energy cosmic rays. We estimate for the first time the cosmic-ray flux derived only from radio observations. In addition, we find that the Monte Carlo simulation of the ANITA data set is in agreement with the total number of observed events and with the properties of those events.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2014

Antarctic Radio Frequency Albedo and Implications for Cosmic Ray Reconstruction

From an elevation of ~38 km, the balloon-borne ANtarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) is designed to detect the up-coming radio frequency (RF) signal resulting from a sub-surface neutrino-nucleon collision. Although no neutrinos have been discovered thus far, ANITA is nevertheless the only experiment to self-trigger on radio frequency emissions from cosmic-ray induced atmospheric air showers. In the majority of those cases, down-coming RF signals are observed via their reflection from the Antarctic ice sheet and back up to the ANITA interferometer. Estimating the energy scale of the incident cosmic rays therefore requires an estimate of the fractional power reflected at the air-ice interface. Similarly, inferring the energy of neutrinos interacting in-ice from observations of the upwards-directed signal refracting out to ANITA also requires consideration of signal coherence across the interface. By comparing the direct Solar RF signal intensity measured with ANITA to the surface-reflected Solar signal intensity, as a function of incident elevation angle relative to the surface Θ, we estimate the power reflection coefficients R(Θ). We find general consistency between our average measurements and the values of R(Θ) expected from the Fresnel equations, separately for horizontal- vs. vertical-polarizations.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2012

TARGET: A multi-channel digitizer chip for very-high-energy gamma-ray telescopes

The next-generation very-high-energy (VHE) gamma-ray observatory, the Cherenkov Telescope Array, will feature dozens of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs), each with thousands of pixels of photo-sensors. To be affordable and reliable, reading out such a mega-channel array requires event recording technology that is highly integrated and modular, with a low cost per channel. We present the design and performance of a chip targeted to this application: the TeV Array Readout with GSa/s sampling and Event Trigger (TARGET). This application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) has 16 parallel input channels, a 4096-sample buffer for each channel, adjustable input termination, self-trigger functionality, and tight window-selected readout. We report the performance of TARGET in terms of sampling frequency, power consumption, dynamic range, current-mode gain, analog bandwidth, and cross talk. The large number of channels per chip allows a low cost per channel ($\10 to $\20 including front-end and back-end electronics but not including photosensors) to be achieved with a TARGET-based IACT readout system. In addition to basic performance parameters of the TARGET chip itself, we present a camera module prototype as well as a second-generation chip (TARGET~2), both of which have been produced.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2011

The First Limits on the Ultra-high Energy Neutrino Fluence from Gamma-ray Bursts

We set the first limits on the ultra-high energy (UHE) neutrino fluence at energies greater than 10^9 GeV from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) based on data from the second flight of the ANtarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA). During the 31 day flight of ANITA-II, 26 GRBs were recorded by Swift or Fermi. Of these, we analyzed the 12 GRBs which occurred during quiet periods when the payload was away from anthropogenic activity. In a blind analysis, we observe 0 events on a total background of 0.0044 events in the combined prompt window for all 12 low-background bursts. We also observe 0 events from the remaining 14 bursts. We place a 90% confidence level limit on the E^-4 prompt neutrino fluence of 2.5x10^17 GeV^3/cm^2 between 10^8 and 10^12 GeV from GRB090107A. This is the first reported limit on the UHE neutrino fluence from GRBs above 10^9 GeV, and the strongest limit above 10^8 GeV.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2011

Ultra-Relativistic Magnetic Monopole Search with the ANITA-II Balloon-borne Radio Interferometer

We have conducted a search for extended energy deposition trails left by ultra-relativistic magnetic monopoles interacting in Antarctic ice. The non-observation of any satisfactory candidates in the 31 days of accumulated ANITA-II flight data results in an upper limit on the diffuse flux of relativistic monopoles. We obtain a 90% C.L. limit of order 10^{-19}/(cm^2-s-sr) for values of Lorentz boost factor 10^{10}<gamma at the anticipated energy E=10^{16} GeV. This bound is stronger than all previously published experimental limits for this kinematic range.

astro-ph.HE↗