arXiv subjects

Xiaolu Ji

Publications and source records attributed to Xiaolu Ji.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Test of the JUNO 20-inch PMTs during Installation

Photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) are widely used in neutrino experiments. As a new-generation neutrino observatory, JUNO requires an excellent energy resolution of 3% at 1 MeV. This will be realized with a 20 kton liquid scintillator detector instrumented with more than 20000 20-inch PMTs and 25600 3-inch PMTs. These PMTs were successfully installed in JUNO from October 2022 to December 2024. During the installation, seven test campaigns were performed to validate the PMT functionality, including measurements dark count rate, gain, waveform, and charge spectrum. In this paper, we present the implementation of these tests and the corresponding results for the 20-inch PMTs throughout the installation process.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2025

A Giant Peanut-shaped Ultra-High-Energy Gamma-Ray Emitter Off the Galactic Plane

Ultra-high-energy (UHE), exceeding 100 TeV (10^12 electronvolts), γ-rays manifests extreme particle acceleration in astrophysical sources. Recent observations by γ-ray telescopes, particularly by the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO), have revealed a few tens of UHE sources, indicating numerous Galactic sources capable of accelerating particles to PeV (10^15 electronvolts) energies. However, discerning the dominant acceleration mechanisms (leptonic versus hadronic), the relative contributions of specific source classes, and the role of particle transport in shaping their observed emission are central goals of modern UHE astrophysics. Here we report the discovery of a giant UHE γ-ray emitter at -17.5° off the Galactic plane - a region where UHE γ-ray sources are rarely found. The emitter exhibits a distinctive asymmetric shape, resembling a giant "Peanut" spanning 0.45° \times 4.6°, indicative of anisotropic particle distribution over a large area. A highly aged millisecond pulsar (MSP) J0218+4232 is the sole candidate accelerator positionally coincident with the Peanut region. Its association with UHE γ-rays extending to 0.7 PeV, if confirmed, would provide the first evidence of a millisecond pulsar powering PeV particles. Such a finding challenges prevailing models, which posit that millisecond pulsars cannot sustain acceleration to PeV energies. The detection reveals fundamental gaps in understanding particle acceleration, cosmic-ray transport, and interstellar magnetic field effects, potentially revealing new PeV accelerator (PeVatron) classes.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2025

JUNO 20-inch PMT and electronics system characterization using large pulses of PMT dark counts at the Pan-Asia testing platform

The main goal of the JUNO experiment is to determine the neutrino mass ordering with a 20kt liquid-scintillator detector. The 20-inch PMT and its 1F3 (one for three) electronics are crucial to realize the excellent energy resolution of at least 3% at 1MeV. The knowledge on the PMT and 1F3 electronics response is critical for detector performance understanding. A study of the JUNO 20-inch PMT and 1F3 electronics system characterization is presented using large pulses of PMT dark count at the Pan-Asia testing platform in China. Thanks to its broad amplitude range and high rate, the large pulse signals are also used to investigate the PMT after pulse response.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2024

Design and Implementation of TAO DAQ System

Purpose: The Taishan Antineutrino Observatory (TAO) is a satellite experiment of the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), also known as JUNO-TAO. Located close to one of the reactors of the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant, TAO will measure the antineutrino energy spectrum precisely as a reference spectrum for JUNO. The data acquisition (DAQ) system is designed to acquire data from the TAO readout electronics and process it with software trigger and data compression algorithms. The data storage bandwidth is limited by the onsite network to be less than 100 Mb/s. Methods: The system is designed based on a distributed architecture, with fully decoupled modules to facilitate customized design and implementation. It is divided into two main components: the data flow system and the online software. The online software serves as the foundation, providing the electronics configuration, the process management, the run control, and the information sharing. The data flow system facilitates continuous data acquisition from various electronic boards or trigger systems, assembles and processes raw data, and ultimately stores it on the disk. Results: The core functionality of the system has been designed and developed. The usability of the data flow system interface and the software trigger results have been verified during the pre-installation testing phase. Conclusion: The DAQ system has been deployed for the TAO experiment. It has also successfully been applied to the integration test of the detector and electronics prototypes.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2024

A Study of the Latest Updates of the Readout System for the Hybird-Pixel Detector at HEPS

The High Energy Photon Source (HEPS) represents a fourth-generation light source. This facility has made unprecedented advancements in accelerator technology, necessitating the development of new detectors to satisfy physical requirements such as single-photon resolution, large dynamic range, and high frame rates. Since 2016, the Institute of High Energy Physics has introduced the first user-experimental hybrid pixel detector, progressing to the fourth-generation million-pixel detector designed for challenging conditions, with the dual-threshold single-photon detector HEPS-Beijing PIXel (HEPS-BPIX) set as the next-generation target. HEPS-BPIX will employ the entirely new Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) BP40 for pixel information readout. Data flow will be managed and controlled through readout electronics based on a two-tier Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) system: the Front-End Electronics (FEE) and the Input-Output Board (IOB) handle the fan-out for 12 ASICs, and the u4FCP is tasked with processing serial data on high-speed links, transferring pixel-level data to the back-end RTM and uTCA chassis, or independently outputting through a network port, enabling remote control of the entire detector. The new HEPS-BPIX firmware has undergone a comprehensive redesign and update to meet the electronic characteristics of the new chip and to improve the overall performance of the detector. We provide an overview of the core subunits of HEPS-BPIX, emphasizing the readout system, evaluating the new hardware and firmware, and highlighting some of its innovative features and characteristics.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2023

Implementation and performances of the IPbus protocol for the JUNO Large-PMT readout electronics

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a large neutrino detector currently under construction in China. Thanks to the tight requirements on its optical and radio-purity properties, it will be able to perform leading measurements detecting terrestrial and astrophysical neutrinos in a wide energy range from tens of keV to hundreds of MeV. A key requirement for the success of the experiment is an unprecedented 3% energy resolution, guaranteed by its large active mass (20 kton) and the use of more than 20,000 20-inch photo-multiplier tubes (PMTs) acquired by high-speed, high-resolution sampling electronics located very close to the PMTs. As the Front-End and Read-Out electronics is expected to continuously run underwater for 30 years, a reliable readout acquisition system capable of handling the timestamped data stream coming from the Large-PMTs and permitting to simultaneously monitor and operate remotely the inaccessible electronics had to be developed. In this contribution, the firmware and hardware implementation of the IPbus based readout protocol will be presented, together with the performances measured on final modules during the mass production of the electronics.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2023

Mass testing of the JUNO experiment 20-inch PMTs readout electronics

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a multi-purpose, large size, liquid scintillator experiment under construction in China. JUNO will perform leading measurements detecting neutrinos from different sources (reactor, terrestrial and astrophysical neutrinos) covering a wide energy range (from 200 keV to several GeV). This paper focuses on the design and development of a test protocol for the 20-inch PMT underwater readout electronics, performed in parallel to the mass production line. In a time period of about ten months, a total number of 6950 electronic boards were tested with an acceptance yield of 99.1%.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2022

Validation and integration tests of the JUNO 20-inch PMTs readout electronics

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a large neutrino detector currently under construction in China. JUNO will be able to study the neutrino mass ordering and to perform leading measurements detecting terrestrial and astrophysical neutrinos in a wide energy range, spanning from 200 keV to several GeV. Given the ambitious physics goals of JUNO, the electronic system has to meet specific tight requirements, and a thorough characterization is required. The present paper describes the tests performed on the readout modules to measure their performances.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2022

Check on the features of potted 20-inch PMTs with 1F3 electronics prototype at Pan-Asia

The Jiangmen underground neutrino observatory (JUNO) is a neutrino project with a 20-kton liquid scintillator detector located at 700-m underground. The large 20-inch PMTs are one of the crucial components of the JUNO experiment aiming to precision neutrino measurements with better than 3% energy resolution at 1 MeV. The excellent energy resolution and a large fiducial volume provide many exciting opportunities for addressing important topics in neutrino and astro-particle physics. With the container #D at JUNO Pan-Asia PMT testing and potting station, the features of waterproof potted 20-inch PMTs were measured with JUNO 1F3 electronics prototype in waveform and charge, which are valuable for better understanding on the performance of the waterproof potted PMTs and the JUNO 1F3 electronics. In this paper, basic features of JUNO 1F3 electronics prototype run at Pan-Asia will be introduced, followed by an analysis of the waterproof potted 20-inch PMTs and a comparison with the results from commercial electronics used by the container #A and #B.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2022

Afterpulse measurement of JUNO 20-inch PMTs

In this article we present the large photo-multiplier tube (PMT) afterpulse measurement results of Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) experiment. Totally 11 dynode-PMTs (R12860) from Hamamatsu company and 150 micro-channel plate PMTs (MCP-PMTs, GDB-6201) from NNVT company were tested, an afterpulse model is built according to the afterpulse time distribution and probability of occurrence for these two types of PMTs. The average ratio between the total afterpulse charge with the delay between 0.5 $μ$ s and 20 $μ$ s to the primary pulse charge is 5.6%(13.2%) for the tested MCP-PMTs (dynode-PMTs). JUNO experiment will deploy 20,012 20-inch PMTs, and this study will benefit the detector simulation, event reconstruction and data analysis of JUNO experiment.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2022

Calibration Strategy of the JUNO-TAO Experiment

The Taishan Antineutrino Observatory (JUNO-TAO, or TAO) is a satellite detector for the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO). Located near the Taishan reactor, TAO independently measures the reactor's antineutrino energy spectrum with unprecedented energy resolution. To achieve this goal, energy response must be well calibrated. Using the Automated Calibration Unit (ACU) and the Cable Loop System (CLS) of TAO, multiple radioactive sources are deployed to various positions in the detector to perform a precise calibration of energy response. The non-linear energy response can be controlled within 0.6% with different energy points of these radioactive sources. It can be further improved by using $^{12}\rm B$ decay signals produced by cosmic muons. Through the energy non-uniformity calibration, residual non-uniformity is less than 0.2%. The energy resolution degradation and energy bias caused by the residual non-uniformity can be controlled within 0.05% and 0.3%, respectively. In addition, the stability of other detector parameters, such as the gain of each silicon photo-multiplier, can be monitored with a special ultraviolet LED calibration system.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2020

The study of calibration for the hybrid pixel detector with single photon counting in HEPS-BPIX

The calibration process for the hybrid array pixel detector designed for High Energy Photon Source in China, we called HEPS-BPIX, is presented in this paper. Based on the threshold scanning, the relationship between energy and threshold is quantified for the threshold calibration. For the threshold trimming, the precise algorithm basing on LDAC characteristic and fast algorithm basing on LDAC scanning are proposed in this paper to study the performance of the threshold DACs which will be applied to the pixel. The threshold dispersion has been reduced from 46.28 mV without algorithm to 6.78 mV with the precise algorithm, whereas it is 7.61 mV with fast algorithm. For the temperature from 5 to 60 , the threshold dispersion of precise algorithm varies in the range of about 5.69 mV, whereas it is about 33.21 mV with the fast algorithm which can be re-corrected to 1.49 mV. The measurement results show that the fast algorithm could get the applicable threshold dispersion for a silicon pixel module and take a shorter time, while the precise algorithm could get better threshold dispersion, but time consuming. The temperature dependence of the silicon pixel module noise is also studied to assess the detector working status. The minimum detection energy can be reduced about 0.83 keV at a 20 lower temperature.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2020

Measurement of the neutron beam profile of the Back-n white neutron facility at CSNS with a Micromegas detector

The Back-n white neutron beam line, which uses back-streaming white neutrons from the spallation target of the China Spallation Neutron Source, is used for nuclear data measurements. A Micromegas-based neutron detector with two variants was specially developed to measure the beam spot distribution for this beam line. In this article, the design, fabrication, and characterization of the detector are described. The results of the detector performance tests are presented, which include the relative electron transparency, the gain and the gain uniformity, and the neutron beam profile reconstruction capability. The result of the first measurement of the Back-n neutron beam spot distribution is also presented.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2019

Measurements of differential and angle-integrated cross sections for the $^{10}$B($n, α$)$^{7}$Li reaction in the neutron energy range from 1.0 eV to 2.5 MeV

Differential and angle-integrated cross sections for the $^{10}$B($n, α$)$^{7}$Li, $^{10}$B($n, α$$_{0}$)$^{7}$Li and $^{10}$B($n, α$$_{1}$)$^{7}$Li$^{*}$ reactions have been measured at CSNS Back-n white neutron source. Two enriched (90%) $^{10}$B samples 5.0 cm in diameter and ~85.0 $μ$g/cm$^{2}$ in thickness each with an aluminum backing were prepared, and back-to-back mounted at the sample holder. The charged particles were detected using the silicon-detector array of the Light-charged Particle Detector Array (LPDA) system. The neutron energy E$_{n}$ was determined by TOF (time-of-flight) method, and the valid $α$ events were extracted from the E$_{n}$-Amplitude two-dimensional spectrum. With 15 silicon detectors, the differential cross sections of $α$-particles were measured from 19.2° to 160.8°. Fitted with the Legendre polynomial series, the ($n, α$) cross sections were obtained through integration. The absolute cross sections were normalized using the standard cross sections of the $^{10}$B($n, α$)$^{7}$Li reaction in the 0.3 - 0.5 MeV neutron energy region. The measurement neutron energy range for the $^{10}$B($n, α$)$^{7}$Li reaction is 1.0 eV $\le$ En < 2.5 MeV (67 energy points), and for the $^{10}$B($n, α$$_{0}$)$^{7}$Li and $^{10}$B($n, α$$_{1}$)$^{7}$Li$^{*}$ reactions is 1.0 eV $\le$ En < 1.0 MeV (59 energy points). The present results have been analyzed by the resonance reaction mechanism and the level structure of the $^{11}$B compound system, and compared with existing measurements and evaluations.

nucl-ex↗

arXiv2018

A readout method based on 10 Gigabit Ethernet for Sipixel detector

With the rapid development of network protocol, TCP/IP has been widely applied in various OS systems because of its advantages of high-speed network transmission and standardization. Furthermore, TCP/IP has the functions of retransmission and flow control, so it can ensure data's security and stability. In recent years, as a transmission Field-bus, it is also widely used in high-energy physics detectors. This article describes a readout method using 10 gigabit network processor applied in silicon pixel detector which is a pixel detector designed for the High Energy Photon Source (HEPS) in China. The PHY layer and the MAC layer of this hardware are both instantiated in FPGA. The logic of hardware can process and read out the data of the detectors. Meanwhile, it wraps up data and send them to TOE (TCP Offload Engine). A kind of bus control protocol interface is also provided, which can facilitate the host computer to read and write the specific register directly through the UDP protocol. Only a piece of FPGA can complete the processing of the TCP and UDP packets. It is important for the miniaturization of the detectors.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2018

The Flash ADC system and PMT waveform reconstruction for the Daya Bay Experiment

To better understand the energy response of the Antineutrino Detector (AD), the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment installed a full Flash ADC readout system on one AD that allowed for simultaneous data taking with the current readout system. This paper presents the design, data acquisition, and simulation of the Flash ADC system, and focuses on the PMT waveform reconstruction algorithms. For liquid scintillator calorimetry, the most critical requirement to waveform reconstruction is linearity. Several common reconstruction methods were tested but the linearity performance was not satisfactory. A new method based on the deconvolution technique was developed with 1% residual non-linearity, which fulfills the requirement. The performance was validated with both data and Monte Carlo (MC) simulations, and 1% consistency between them has been achieved.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2016

First results of the new endcap TOF commissioning at BESIII

The upgrade of the current BESIII Endcap TOF (ETOF) is carried out with the Multi-gap Resistive Plate Chamber (MRPC) technology. The installation of the new ETOF has been finished in October 2015. The first results of the MRPCs commissioning at BESIII are reported in this paper.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2016

The upgrade system of BESIII ETOF with MRPC technology

The Beijing Spectrometer III (BESIII) endcap Time-Of-Filght (ETOF) was proposed to upgrade with Multigap Resistive Plate Chamber (MRPC) technology to substitute the current ETOF of scintillator+PMT for extending time resolutin better than 80 ps and enhance the particle identification capability to satisfy the higher precision requirement of physics. The ETOF system including MRPC modules, front end electronics (FEE), CLOCK module, fast control boards and time to digital modules (TDIG), has been designed, constructed and done some experimental tests seperately. Aiming at examining the quality of entire ETOF system and training the operation of all participated parts, a cosmic ray test system was built at the laboratory and underwent about three months to guarantee performance. In this paper the results will be presented indicating that the entire ETOF system works well and satisfies the requirements of the upgrade.

physics.ins-det↗