News

CAEN Educational for young researchers @ European Space Agency

Nicole Filippi

CAEN Educational for young researchers @ European Space Agency

by

The EIROforum School on Instrumentation (ESI) is a biennial event, jointly organized by the Instrumentation Working Group of the EIROforum organizations. The objective of ESI is to teach the basic principles of instrumentation to young researchers (PhD students, postdocs) and engineers from the EIRO organizations, companies, and institutes from Europe and beyond.
The sixth school (ESI 2019) took place from 13-17 May 2019 at ESA/ESTEC in Noordwijk, The Netherlands.

ESI event's photo
ESI event's photo
ESI event's photo
CAEN Educational for young researchers @ European Space Agency preview image

In summary

  • 73 young professionals coming from all over Europe attended the school.
  • They contributed to the school scientific programme with posters and flash presentations of 2 minutes.
  • The school core programme comprised more than 25 talks on Particle Physics, Nuclear Fusion, X-ray Free-electron Laser, Synchrotron Radiation, Molecular Biology, Space and Astronomy instrumentations.
  • More than 20 lecturers coming from the EIROforum organizations contributed to this scientific programme.
  • The school highlight was an afternoon dedicated to Artificial Intelligence with ESA and CERN contributions including hands-on exercises, jointly organized with IT EIROforum working group.
  • The last day was a full project day during which teams collaborated and learned about technology transfer, jointly organized with Innovation Management and Knowledge / Technology Transfer (IMKTT) working group.

ESI2019 has been financially supported by 5 industrial sponsors and instrumentation leaders: CAEN, DECTRIS, Kuraray, HAMAMATSU and Teledyne-e2v.

The detailed programme (including lectures’ title and lecturers) together with the presentations are available online at this link: https://indico.cern.ch/event/777129/timetable/#20190513.detailed

More info about the event: https://www.eiroforum.org/event/6th-eiroforum-school-on-instrumentation/

CAEN Educational Kit available here

MICADO, European Project for The Monitoring of Radioactive Waste, Kicks Off

by

Standardize the management of radioactive waste, starting from their non-destructive characterization to transport, storage and real-time monitoring. This is the objective of the MICADO Project (Measurement and Instrumentation for Cleaning and Decommissioning Operations), started on June 3, thanks to Euratom funding, and to the synergy between 8 European partners with solid experience in the field of radioactive waste, nuclear techniques, electronics and information technology.

CAEN is the coordinator of the project and will contribute with more than 40 years of experience in the field of nuclear electronics and a growing presence in the market of complete measurement systems, it will be joined by other to renowned Italian research institutions INFN and ENEA, which have specific expertise on radiation detection and techniques for radioactive material management. The international partners are ORANO and CEA for France, a large company leader in the nuclear energy sector and a public institution which has lead the field of nuclear research in France for years, SCK-CEN for Belgium and CTU for the Czech Republic are two other research institutes whit a solid expertise in nuclear management and algorithm development, finally XIE for Germany that is another SME with experience in X-ray detection.

MICADO provides a complete digitalization process that will facilitate and harmonize all the methods used in the field for waste management as well as for the dismantling and decommissioning (D&D) of nuclear plants. To date, in fact, there is no single, consistent and linear solution to characterize various types of radioactive materials, just as there is no integrated solution for digitizing the enormous amount of data produced. The Digi-Waste RCMS solution proposed in the MICADO project will produce a modular hardware and software system to unify and standardize procedures and methods for non-destructive characterization and monitoring of nuclear waste, proposing itself as an international reference for all nuclear operators, research laboratories and the security authorities, facilitating the exchange of fundamental and often critical information.

MICADO preview page

Website: www.micado-project.eu

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 innovation action programme under grant agreement No 847641. This text reflects only the author’s views and the Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

Starting date: June 2019
Ending date: May 2022

The MICADO consortium consists of 8 partners from 5 European countries counting Research Institutes, SMEs and Large companies. The project is expected to last 36 months with a budget of EUR 5 million (EU contribution: EUR 4.5 million).

MICADO Consortium Members

CAEN Logo 2011
Caen SpA, Italy
CEA Logo
CEA, France
Cvut logo
CTU, Czech Republic
Enea logo
ENEA, Italy
INFN logo
INFN, Italy
Orano logo
Orano, France
Sogin logo
Sogin, Italy
Sck-cen Logo
SCK-CEN, Belgium
XIE logo
XIE, Germany

Rarest decay process ever measured – XENON1T experiment

by

XENON1T experiment observed the rarest decay process ever measured; this detector that was designed to probe dark matter, the ‘missing’ mass in the Universe, has seen an elusive nuclear decay called two-neutrino double electron capture — with implications for nuclear and particle physics.

Read the full article on nature.com

What is XENON1T Experiment

XENON experiment is a 3500kg liquid xenon detector to search for the elusive Dark Matter – construction of the next phase, XENON1T, started in Hall B of the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in 2014. The detector contains 3.5 tons of ultra radio-pure liquid Xenon, and has a fiducial volume of about 2 tons. The detector is housed in a 10 m water tank that serves as a muon veto. The TPC is 1 m in diameter and 1 m in height. The predicted sensitivity at 50 GeV/c2 is 2.0×10−47 cm2. This is 100x lower than the current limit published for XENON100.

DAQ by CAEN

CAEN V1724 fADCs with 100 MHz sampling frequency and 40 MHz input bandwidth were used in XENON100 and used again in XENON1T but in this later stage the system has been upgraded to handle a larger amount of data. This lead to a rather short development time since old systems and software (also for data storage and data processing) can be largely re-used.
In XENON100 the maximum DAQ rate was increased by more than one order of magnitude compared to XENON10 – although the drift length was doubled and the number of channels increased by a factor 2.7 – by using an online data reduction technique. This FPGA based method is basically rejecting all baseline between peaks and reduces the amount of data to be transferred and stored dramatically.
Currently, the factor limiting the DAQ rate is the overall data throughput for the full DAQ line, starting from the VME bus to the transfer to the computer cluster above ground. This problem can be easily solved by parallelizing the DAQ system.

XENON1T experiment preview image
A wide view of XENON1T Experiment
XENON1T experiment media
A wide view of the DAQ room

What is XENON1T Experiment

XENON experiment is a 3500kg liquid xenon detector to search for the elusive Dark Matter – construction of the next phase, XENON1T, started in Hall B of the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in 2014. The detector contains 3.5 tons of ultra radio-pure liquid Xenon, and has a fiducial volume of about 2 tons. The detector is housed in a 10 m water tank that serves as a muon veto. The TPC is 1 m in diameter and 1 m in height. The predicted sensitivity at 50 GeV/c2 is 2.0×10−47 cm2. This is 100x lower than the current limit published for XENON100.

DAQ by CAEN

CAEN V1724 fADCs with 100 MHz sampling frequency and 40 MHz input bandwidth were used in XENON100 and used again in XENON1T but in this later stage the system has been upgraded to handle a larger amount of data. This lead to a rather short development time since old systems and software (also for data storage and data processing) can be largely re-used.
In XENON100 the maximum DAQ rate was increased by more than one order of magnitude compared to XENON10 – although the drift length was doubled and the number of channels increased by a factor 2.7 – by using an online data reduction technique. This FPGA based method is basically rejecting all baseline between peaks and reduces the amount of data to be transferred and stored dramatically.
Currently, the factor limiting the DAQ rate is the overall data throughput for the full DAQ line, starting from the VME bus to the transfer to the computer cluster above ground. This problem can be easily solved by parallelizing the DAQ system.

There is a little bit of CAEN, Italy in the picture of the century

by

There is a little bit of CAEN, Italy in the picture of the century. CAEN in fact designed and supplied 83 customized power supplies for the ALMA telescope (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array).

ALMA is a single instrument, composed initially of 66 high-precision antennas, in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, 5000 metres above sea level. The array has been constructed on Chajnantor plateau at wavelengths of 0.3 to 9.6 mm. Its ’12 metre array’ will have fifty 12-m diameter antennas, acting together as a single telescope – an interferometer. The antenna Front-End data acquisition system, placed in the antenna’s base cabin, is powered with CAEN custom developed Low Voltage Power Supply unit. This PS unit make available 8 LV different voltages with extremely low ripple, remotely controllable.

Alma telescope
Alma telescope
Alma telescope

About ESO

ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe. It is supported by 14 countries: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in the Atacama Desert region of Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor.
ESO WEB site: http://www.eso.org/

About ALMA

The ALMA project is a partnership between Europe, Japan and North America in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in Europe by ESO, in Japan by the National Institutes of Natural Sciences in cooperation with the Academia Sinica in Taiwan and in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada
ESO ALMA Project Web site: http://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/alma/index.html
ALMA web site: http://www.almaobservatory.org/

CAEN presents PRIMIS and NEOLITE projects at ToscanaTech2018

by

CAEN has presented the results of the completed NEOLITE project and the ongoing PRIMIS project at the ToscanaTech2018 event, organized by Regione Toscana in Florence last 19/20 November.

The event was focused on Industry4.0 and more in general on innovation in Tuscany, CAEN since it foundation has always been on the forefront of innovative R&D thanks to collaborations with research institutes and universities, also thanks to projects publicly funded as PRIMIS and NEOLITE by Regione Toscana.

CAEN still paves the way forward at CERN

by

CAEN EASY BRIC1 passed the technical review imposed by the ATLAS collaboration to participate at the tender to power the New Small Wheel detector.

CAEN proudly announces that its new EASY BRIC1 qualified, after the technical review by the ATLAS collaboration, to participate at the tender for the New Small Wheel detector power supplies in hostile area. After a careful test campaign conducted at CERN our newborn of the EASY family, a high-power DC-DC converter called BRIC1 (B and Rad tolerant Intermediate Converted), has been validated to operate in the harsh condition of the ATLAS experimental cavern. This represents for CAEN a huge success of an R&D program that has started in 2016 and will continue in the next years to produce the next generation of power supplies for high energy physics.

CAEN EASY BRIC1 image
CERN preview image
ATLAS New Small Wheel (NSW) mechanical structure. (Image: © CERN)

CAEN first developed the EASY (Embedded Assembly SYstem) in the late ’90 and it soon became a reference for the physicists at CERN thanks to its scalability and flexibility, qualities firmly needed when building the large LHC experiments. The name BRIC1 has been intentionally chosen to resemble the word “brick” to signify CAEN resolution to build a new system of power supplies, starting from technologies implemented in this first piece and all the experience gathered during the 20 years of LHC operations, and eventually set a new benchmark for the physicist as the EASY was in the early stages of the LHC.

The New Small Wheel (NSW) detector is a gas detector meant to reconstruct muons in the forward area of the ATLAS experiment at LHC. It is one of the first major upgrades to be installed for ATLAS and it will help the experiment to enhance its performance in muon identification and measurement in view of the next years of data taking, with higher and higher instantaneous luminosities.

For more information about ATLAS experiment https://atlas.cern/

For more information about CAEN EASY BRIC1 click here