arXiv subjects

Zhongtao Shen

Publications and source records attributed to Zhongtao Shen.

14 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Application and Optimization of the GET Electronics System for Double-Sided Silicon Strip Detector Readout

Double-sided silicon strip detectors (DSSDs) are widely used for charged-particle detection in nuclear reaction experiments. However, the large number of readout channels associated with DSSDs places stringent demands on front-end electronics and data acquisition systems, particularly in experiments employing large detector arrays. In this work, we investigate the application and optimization of the Generic Electronics for Time Projection Chambers (GET) system for multi-channel DSSD readout. Through optimization of the DC-blocking capacitors on the custom-designed interface board and waveform-based energy extraction algorithms, the readout system achieves an energy resolution of σ = 22 keV for 5.49 MeV alpha particles. Its performance is further validated in a representative nuclear physics experiment employing charged-particle telescopes. The results demonstrate that the GET system provides a versatile and scalable waveform-sampling solution for multi-channel DSSD readout.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2026

QuCtrl-BELL: A Compiler-Driven Sub-Microsecond Feedback Control Stack for Scalable Trapped-Ion Quantum Experiments

As trapped-ion quantum computing scales to larger qubit registers and more complex control protocols, classical control systems face a fundamental tradeoff: sub-microsecond board-level feedback requires tight hardware coupling, whereas maintainability and extensibility require clean, modular software abstractions. This paper presents QuCtrl-BELL (Bell), a compiler-driven software stack for trapped-ion quantum control. The design resolves this tradeoff by decoupling control flow -- including loops, branches, and synchronization -- from hardware state data. A Python-embedded domain-specific language (DSL) is lowered through a six-stage transpilation pipeline covering control flow graph (CFG) construction, static single-assignment (SSA) conversion, liveness analysis, and graph-coloring register allocation. The compiler generates deterministic distributed board-level programs and compact step-table data. A cross-board synchronization protocol supports feedback loops with latency below 700~ns without host intervention. Bell is deployed and evaluated on the QuCtrl-BELL platform (RISC-V + PXIe), demonstrating that a compiler-based infrastructure can provide programmability, deterministic timing, and modularity for scalable trapped-ion quantum control.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

A Method for On-Orbit Calibration of the VLAST-P Electromagnetic Calorimeter

The Very Large Area Gamma-ray Space Telescope Pathfinder (VLAST-P), as the technology validation satellite for the VLAST mission, is designed to observe high-energy solar bursts on orbit. The CsI electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL) is one of the key sub-detectors of VLAST-P. To investigate the on-orbit energy calibration method of the ECAL, a Geant4-based simulation of VLAST-P was carried out. The results show an energy resolution better than 10% in the 0.1 to 5 GeV range and a linearity deviation below 2%. A dedicated minimum-ionization-particle (MIP) calibration method was developed to ensure accurate energy reconstruction and to monitor detector stability throughout the in-orbit calibration period.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2026

The development of a high granular crystal calorimeter prototype of VLAST

Very Large Area gamma-ray Space Telescope (VLAST) is the next-generation flagship space observatory for high-energy gamma-ray detection proposed by China. The observation energy range covers from MeV to TeV and beyond, with acceptance of 10 m^2sr. The calorimeter serves as a crucial subdetector of VLAST, responsible for high-precision energy measurement and electron/proton discrimination. This discrimination capability is essential for accurately identifying gamma-ray events among the background of charged particles. To accommodate such an extensive energy range, a high dynamic range readout scheme employing dual avalanche photodiodes (APDs) has been developed, achieving a remarkable dynamic range of 10^6. Furthermore, a high granular prototype based on bismuth germanate (BGO) cubic scintillation crystals has been developed. This high granularity enables detailed imaging of the particle showers, improving both energy resolution and particle identification. The prototype's performance is evaluated through cosmic ray testing, providing valuable data for optimizing the final calorimeter design for VLAST.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2025

Development of the CEPC analog hadron calorimeter prototype

The Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) is a next-generation electron$-$positron collider proposed for the precise measurement of the properties of the Higgs boson. To emphasize boson separation and jet reconstruction, the baseline design of the CEPC detector was guided by the particle flow algorithm (PFA) concept. As one of the calorimeter options, the analogue hadron calorimeter (AHCAL) was proposed. The CEPC AHCAL comprises a 40-layer sandwich structure using steel plates as absorbers and scintillator tiles coupled with silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) as sensitive units. To validate the feasibility of the AHCAL option, a series of studies were conducted to develop a prototype. This AHCAL prototype underwent an electronic test and a cosmic ray test to assess its performance and ensure it was ready for three beam tests performed in 2022 and 2023. The test beam data is currently under analysis, and the results are expected to deepen our understanding of hadron showers, validate the concept of Particle Flow Algorithm (PFA), and ultimately refine the design of the CEPC detector.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2023

A Light Yield Enhancement Method Using Wavelength Shifter for the STCF EMC

Super Tau-Charm Facility (STCF) is a next-generation high luminosity electron-positron collider facility and is currently one of the major options for accelerator-based particle physics experiment in China. The crystal-based electromagnetic calorimeter (EMC) with undoped CsI is a major sub-system of the STCF spectrometer. To fulfill the increasing physics requirements on measurement precision and the suffering of radiation, improving the detected light yield is an important task of STCF EMC R&D. This paper studies a "wavelength shifting in propagation" scheme for STCF EMC using the nanostructured organosilicon luminophore (NOL). The studies are performed by both Monte Carlo simulation and experimental tests. The light yield is proved to be improved by a factor of 1.59 in the experiment. Meanwhile, a study of the NOL's radiation hardness is carried out to verify the reliability of the NOL. No obvious degradation in the performance is observed with the total ionization does up to 100 krad, far beyond the total radiation dose of STCF with ten years of operation.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2022

A low dead time, resource efficient encoding method for FPGA based high-resolution TDL TDCs

This paper presents a novel encoding method for fine time data of a tapped delay line (TDL) time-to-digital Converter (TDC). It is based on divide-and-conquer strategy, and has the advantage of significantly reducing logic resource utilization while retaining low dead-time performance. Furthermore, the problem of high bubble depth in advanced devices can be resolved with this method. Four examples are demonstrated, which were implemented in a Xilinx Artix-7 Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) device, and encoding method presented in this paper was employed to encode fine time data for normal TDL TDC, a half-length delay line TDC, and double-edge and four-edge wave union TDCs. Compared with TDCs from the latest published papers that adopt traditional encoders, the logic utilization of TDCs in this paper were reduced by a factor of 45% to 70% in different situations, while the encoding dead time can be restricted in one clock cycle. Acceptable resolutions of the demonstrated TDCs were also obtained, proving the functionality of the encoding method.

physics.space-ph↗

arXiv2022

FPGA-based electronic system for the control and readout of superconducting quantum processors

Electronic systems for qubit control and measurement serve as a bridge between quantum programming language and quantum information processors. With the rapid development of superconducting quantum circuit (SQC) technology, synchronization in a large-scale system, low-latency execution, and low noise are required for electronic systems. Here, we present a field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based electronic system with a distributed synchronous clock and trigger architecture. The system supports synchronous control of qubits with jitters of approximately 5 ps. We implement a real-time digital signal processing system in the FPGA, enabling precise timing control, arbitrary waveform generation, IQ demodulation for qubit state discrimination, and the generation of real-time qubit-state-dependent trigger signals for feedback/feedforward control. The hardware and firmware low-latency design reduces the feedback/feedforward latency of the electronic system to 125 ns, significantly less than the decoherence times of the qubit. Finally, we demonstrate the functionalities and low-noise performance of this system using a fluxonium quantum processor.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Development and Commissioning of a Compact Cosmic Ray Muon Imaging Prototype

Due to the muon tomography's capability of imaging high Z materials, some potential applications have been reported on inspecting smuggled nuclear materials in customs. A compact Cosmic Ray Muons (CRM) imaging prototype, Lanzhou University Muon Imaging System (LUMIS), is comprehensively introduced in this paper including the structure design, assembly, data acquisition and analysis, detector performance test, and material imaging commissioning etc. Casted triangular prism plastic scintillators (PS) were coupled with Si-PMs for sensitive detector components in system. LUMIS's experimental results show that the detection efficiency of an individual detector layer is about 98%, the position resolution for vertical incident muons is 2.5 mm and the angle resolution is 8.73 mrad given a separation distance of 40.5 cm. Moreover, the image reconstruction software was developed based on the Point of Closest Approach (PoCA) to detect lead bricks as our target. The reconstructed images indicate that the profile of the lead bricks in the image is highly consistent with the target. Subsequently, the capability of LUMIS to distinguish different materials, such as Pb, Cu, Fe, and Al, was investigated as well. The lower limit of response time for rapidly alarming high-Z materials is also given and discussed. The successful development and commissioning of the LUMIS prototype have provided a new solution option in technology and craftsmanship for developing compact CRM imaging systems that can be used in many applications.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2021

A High Spatial Resolution Muon Tomography Prototype System based on Micromegas Detector

Cosmic ray muon has strong penetrating power and no ionizing radiation hazards, which makes it an ideal probe for detecting special nuclear materials. In this paper, a high spatial resolution muon tomography system based on Micromegas detectors is proposed to optimize the imaging time and quality. The proposed system includes eight Micromegas detectors based on the thermal bonding technique and a scalable readout system. In addition, a multiplexing method based on position encoding is developed to reduce the number of electronics channels by order of magnitude. The spatial resolution of the proposed system with encoding readout can reach a value of hundred micrometers. Finally, a tomography test is performed, and test results show that this proposed system can image 2-cm objects and distinguish different materials.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2018

Readout Electronics for CEPC Semi-Digital Hadron Calorimeter Pre-prototype

CEPC (Circular Electron and Positron Collider) is a large experiment facility proposed by Chinese particle physics community. One of its running option is being the Higgs factory. Calorimeter is the main part of this experiment to measure the jet energy. Semi-digital hadron calorimeter (SDHCAL) is one of the options for the hadron measurement. GEM detector with its high position resolution and flexible configuration is one of the candidates for the active layer of the SDHCAL. The main purpose of this paper is to provide a feasible readout method for the GEM-based semi-digital hadron calorimeter. A small-scale prototype is designed and implemented, including front-end board (FEB) and data interface board (DIF). The prototype electronics has been tested. The equivalent RMS noise of all channels is below 0.35fC. The dynamic range is up to 500fC and the gain variation is less than 1%. The readout electronics is applied on a double-layer GEM detector with 1cm*1cm readout pad. Result indicates that the electronics works well with the detector. The detection efficiency of MIP is over 95% with 5fC threshold.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2018

Prototype of Front-end Electronics for PandaX-4ton Experiment

At the China Jinping Underground Laboratory, the Particle AND Astrophysical Xenon phase IV (PandaX-4ton) in planning is a dark matter direct detection experiment with dual-phase xenon detector as an upgrade of the second phase of the experiment, PandaX-II. In this paper, the prototype of the front-end electronics of PandaX-4ton is presented. The front-end electronics consist of the high-gain preamplifier cards and the eight-channel digitizers with 14-bit resolution and 1 GSps sampling rate for waveform digitization. The clock synchronization circuit within the digitizer is well-designed to align all the PMT channels. The digitizer also contains gigabit fiber to exchange data with trigger and data acquisition system. The specification of effective number of bits f the digitizer is about 9.7 b at 148 MHz, and the integral nonlinearity of the digitizer ranges from -4 least significant bit (LSB) to +4 LSB, and the differential nonlinearity ranges from -0.6 LSB to +0.6 LSB. The performance of the front-end electronics can meet the requirements for the PandaX-4ton.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2018

Study on the Real-time Lossless Data Compression Method Used in the Readout System for Micro-pattern Gas Detector

The data compression technology now is fully developed and widely used in many fields such as communication, multi-media, image information processing and so on. The large physical experiments, especially the ones with Micro-pattern Gas Detectors (MPGD), which always have many readout channels and have a lot of data to be transferred and saved, are however relatively seldom use this technology. In this paper, the real-time lossless data compression method is proposed for a general-purposed MPGD readout system. The lossless data compression can reduce the data transmission bandwidth of the system as well as keep all information of the data. The compression method discussed in the paper mainly consists of two steps. The first step is to pre-process the data according to different characteristics of different signals and the second step is to compress the pre-processed data using common lossless compression algorithm. Besides, the whole compression method is implemented in the Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and able to run real-timely. The system is then used to readout two different kinds of signals and the compression rate can reach as high as 43% and 30% respectively.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2014

Study on FPGA SEU Mitigation for Readout Electronics of DAMPE BGO Calorimeter

The BGO calorimeter, which provides a wide measurement range of the primary cosmic ray spectrum, is a key sub-detector of Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE). The readout electronics of calorimeter consists of 16 pieces of Actel ProASIC Plus FLASH-based FPGA, of which the design-level flip-flops and embedded block RAMs are single event upset (SEU) sensitive in the harsh space environment. Therefore to comply with radiation hardness assurance (RHA), SEU mitigation methods, including partial triple modular redundancy (TMR), CRC checksum, and multi-domain reset are analyzed and tested by the heavy-ion beam test. Composed of multi-level redundancy, a FPGA design with the characteristics of SEU tolerance and low resource consumption is implemented for the readout electronics.

physics.ins-det↗