Pulse shaping for low-noise, charge preamplifiers

Pulse shaper circuits are often needed to reduce noise levels and condition signals for processing. The noise attributes of several time-invariant and time-variant pulse shapers are compared for a charge preamplifier designed for atomic calorimetry measurements. Pulse shapers reviewed are equally applicable to a wide range of measurement applications. Previous work examining the noise attributes of pulse shapers has been based on simplistic noise modeling. The contribution of this work is a comparison of the noise characteristics of a reasonably complete set of pulse shaper configurations using the noise modeling available through the SPICE circuit simulator. A pulse shaper is selected for fabrication, and experimental results are discussed