Performance of a fast low noise front-end preamplifier for the MAGIC imaging Cherenkov telescope

Abstract

The observation of high energy cosmic gamma rays with an energy threshold of 15 GeV using the proposed MAGIC ground based air imaging Cherenkov telescope requires the development of new low noise fast preamplifiers for the camera photosensors. The speed and noise performance of a transimpedance preamplifier that resolves the multi photoelectron peaks from a hybrid photomultiplier with a peaking time below 7 ns is presented. The new front-end circuit is designed with RF low noise bipolar transistors and provides fast output pulses that allow for fast trigger settings.

RF pulse amplifier for CVD-diamond particle detectors

“…Integrated circuits were essentially CMOS devices [9,10], but also bipolar [11,12] and JFET and CMOS [13] combination. For low noise and low power application, discrete transistors came back around years 2000 with HEMT technology [14][15][16][17][18]. Nowadays there are still HEMT [19] existing, but a new technology emerges, the heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) with a slight improvement of the noise level, of the rising time and the radiation hardness [20].…”