Terahertz Direct Detectors Based on Superconducting Hot Electron Bolometers with Microwave Biasing

Terahertz （THz） direct detectors based on superconducting niobium nitride （NbN） hot electron bolometers （HEBs） with microwave （MW） biasing are studied. The MW is used to bias the HEB to the optimum point and to readout the impedance changes caused by the incident THz signals. Compared with the thermal biasing method, this method would be more promising in large scale array with simple readout. The used NbN HEB has an excellent performance as heterodyne detector with the double sideband noise temperature （T N） of 403K working at 4.2K and 0.65THz. As a result, the noise equivalent power of 1.5pW/Hz 1/2 and the response time of 64ps are obtained for the direct detectors based on the NbN HEBs and working at 4.2K and 0.65THz.

Development of Electron Temperature Measuring System by Silicon Drift Detector

The soft X-ray spectroscopy, laser Thomson scattering and electron cyclotron emission （ ECE ） are usually adopted for electron temperature measurement in fusion research of magnetic confinement. The particular soft X-ray spectroscopy has the very good spatial-temporal resolution and smaller measuring error than laser Thomson scattering, a close spatial-temporal resolution to ECE, absolute measurement ability, and smaller influence by suprathermal and runaway electrons than ECE.

A New Carrier Gas Type for Accurate Measurement of N_2O by GC-ECD

The accurate measurement of concentration is the basis for determining emission sources and sinks of nitrous oxide （N2O）. The detection of N2O showed that the presence of carbon dioxide （CO2） biased the N2O response when pure nitrogen （N2） was used as a carrier gas for gas chromatography （GC） equipped with an electron capture detector （GC-ECD）. In this study, laboratory experiments were carried out to explore how the presence of CO2 interferes with the accurate determination of N2O. The aims were to address the extent of the influence to try and explain the underlying mechanism, and to uncover technical options for solving the problem. Three GC carrier gases are discussed： pure nitrogen （DN）; a mixture of argon and methane （AM）; and a high concentration CO2, which was introduced into the ECD cell with a low flow rate based on DN （DN-CO2）. The results show that when DN was used, the existence of CO2 in the ECD cell greatly enhanced the response of N2O, which increased with CO2 content and remained constant when the content reached a limit. Comparisons between the three methods show that the DN method is defective for the accurate determination of N2O. The bias is caused by different electron capture mechanisms of CO2 and N2O and depends heavily on the detector temperature. New GC carrier gas types with make-up gases that can remove the CO2-induced influence, such as the DN-CO2 and DN-CH4 methods reported in this paper, are recommended for the accurate measurement of N2O.

A 5.12-GHz LC-based phase-locked loop for silicon pixel readouts of high-energy physics

There is an urgent need for high-quality and high-frequency clock generators for high-energy physics experiments.The transmission data rate exceeds 10 Gbps for a single channel in future readout electronics of silicon pixel detectors.Others,such as time measurement detectors,require a high time resolution based on the time-to-digital readout architecture.A phase-locked loop(PLL)is an essential and broadly used circuit in these applications.This study presents an application-specific integrated circuit of a low-jitter,low-power LC-tank that is PLL fabricated using 55-nm CMOS technology.It includes a 3rd-order frequency synthesis loop with a programmable bandwidth,a divide-by-2 pre-scaler,standard low-voltage differential signaling interfaces,and a current mode logic(CML)driver for clock transmissions.All the d-flip-flop dividers and phase-frequency detectors are protected from single-event upsets using the triple modular redundancy technique.The proposed VCO uses low-pass filters to suppress the noise from bias circuits.The tested LC-PLL covers a frequency locking range between 4.74 GHz and 5.92 GHz with two sub-bands.The jitter measurements of the frequency-halved clock(2.56 GHz)are less than 460 fs and 0.8 ps for the random and deterministic jitters,respectively,and a total of 7.5 ps peak-to-peak with a bit error rate of 10^(-12).The random and total jitter values for frequencies of 426 MHz and 20 MHz are less than 1.8 ps and 65 ps,respectively.The LC-PLL consumed 27 mW for the core and 73.8 mW in total.The measured results nearly coincided with the simulations and validated the analyses and tests.

Test of the LHAASO electron detector prototype using cosmic rays

The LHAASO project is to be built in south-west China, using an array of 5137 electron detectors for the measurement of incident electrons arriving at the detector plane. For quality control of the large number of electron detectors, a cosmic ray hodoscope with two-dimensional spatial sensitivity and good time resolution has been developed. The first prototype of the electron detector has been tested with the hodoscope and the performance of the detector is found to be consistent with the design.

The relevance of James Lovelock’s research and philosophy to environmental science and academia

James E.Lovelock,famed for his Gaia hypothesis,which views the Earth as a living integrated and interconnected self-regulating system whose equilibrium comes about from complex energy-based interactions and feedback loops,ultimately sustaining life,passed away at the end of July,2022 at the age of 103.Not only are the adaptive mechanisms of Gaia central to the conversation of environmental homeostasis,they lie at the heart of climate change and global warming.Lovelock is also remembered as the co-inventor of the electron capture detector that eventually allowed for the sensitive detection of chlorofluorocarbons and pesticides.Finally,Lovelock’s free-spirited nature and research independence allow academia to rethink current research’s modus operandi.

Investigation of electrons inside the satellite by the Geant4 simulation

The measurement of the electron radiation inside the satellite is important for engineering and space environment researches.The particle radiation detectors (PRD) on board CBERS-1 and CBERS-2 made great contribution to understanding of the space environment.Then,what is the radiation relationship between inside and outside the satellite? The Monte Carlo simula-tion with Geant4 was implemented to study the problem.The boundaries of the energy bins of 0.5 and 2 MeV were precisely corresponding to outside energies of 0.99 and 2.52 MeV,respectively.Besides the changes of the energy bins,the fluxes inside were smaller than those of the corresponding bins outside.The spectrum inside the satellite was harder than that outside.An indicator was that the flux ratio of the high energy bin to the low energy bin increased more than 20% from outside to inside.The geometric factor (GF) relates to the incident energy of electrons.By using the AE-8 model to derive the incident spec-trum,the GFs of the low and high energy bins were 1.15 and 0.70 cm2 sr,respectively.GF of the low energy bin was larger than that of the high energy bin.But they were both smaller than the previous results.It was due to the scattering,straggle and shielding effects.

Design and performance study of the LEPD silicon tracker onboard the CSES satellite

The low energy particle detector （LEPD） is one of the main payloads onboard the China seismic electromagnetic satellite （CSES）. The detector is designed to ascertain space electrons （0.1–10 MeV） and protons （2–50 MeV）. It has the capability of identifying the electrons and protons, to measure the energy spectrum and the incident angle of the particles. The LEPD is made up of a silicon tracker system, a CsI （Tl） mini-calorimeter, an anti-coincidence system made by plastic scintillator, as well as electronics and a data acquisition system （DAQ）. The tracker is also a kind of E-E telescope; it consists of two layers of double-sided silicon strip detectors （DSSD）. The signals emerging from the silicon tracker can be read out by two pieces of application specific integrated circuit （ASIC）, which also can generate an event trigger for the LEPD. The functions of the DSSD system in the LEPD for charged particles were tested by 241Am @5.486 MeV α particles. The results show that the DSSD system works well, and has high performance to detect charged particles and measure the position of incident particles.

Effect of Copper Content on the Direct Process of Organosilane Synthesis from Silicon and Methyl Chloride

The effect of copper concentration on the performance of the catalytic reaction between silicon and methyl chloride was investigated using online gas chromatogram. The catalyst concentration greatly influences various aspects of the direct organosilane synthesis process, including the reaction rate, the selec- tivity, and the silicon conversion. The reaction activity and the silicon conversion increase as the catalyst concentration increases. However, the reaction selectivity decreases for the catalyst concentrations more .than 9 wt.%. The cross-sections of deactivated contact mass particles were observed by optical microscopy and analyzed by scanning electron microscope combined with energy dispersive X-ray detector （SEM-EDX） The observations showed that a textured substance formed on the original flat surface of the silicon particles after deactivation with copper only in a shallow surface layer of the contact mass. This indicates that the copper diffusion is the rate limiting step which causes the reaction deactivation.

Reconstruction algorithm study of 2D interpolating resistive readout structure

Systematic investigations including both simulation and prototype tests have been done about the interpolating resistive readout structure with GEM （Gaseous Electron Multiplier） detector. From the simulation, we have a good knowledge of the process of charge diffusion on the surface of the readout plane and develop several reconstruction methods to determine the hit position. The total signal duration time of a typical event with the readout structure was about several hundred nanoseconds, which implied an ideal count rate up to 106 Hz. A stable working prototype was designed and fabricated after the simulation. Using 55Fe 5.9 performance of the prototype was examined with flat field image and some special geometry energy resolution of about 17% was obtained. keV X-ray, the image shapes, meanwhile, an