MIPP Plastic Ball electronics upgrade

An upgrade electronics design for Plastic Ball detector is described. The Plastic Ball detector was a part of several experiments in the past and its back portion (proposed to be used in Main Injector Particle Production (MIPP)) consists of 340 photomultipliers equipped with a sandwich scintillator. The scintillator sandwich has fast and slow signal component with decay times 10 ns and 1 μs, respectively. The upgraded MIPP experiment will collect up to 12,000 events during each 4 s spill and read them out in ∼50 s between spills. The MIPP data acquisition system will employ deadtime-less concept successfully implemented in Muon Electronics of Dzero experiment at Fermilab An 8-channel prototype design of the Plastic Ball Front-End (PBFE) implementing these requirements is discussed. Details of the schematic design, simulation and prototype test results are discussed.