Friday, April 28, 2017

Nuclear Instrumentation & Services

CAEN SyS is a new group within the CAEN network of companies that provides nuclear measurement solutions and technical expertise for a wide array of applications:
  • Health Physics, Spectroscopy, and Radiation Measurements Systems
  • Custom Nuclear Measurement Systems: Plant, Waste, Safeguards, Security
  • Nuclear Waste characterization products and solutions
  • Spectroscopic survey of large surfaces with real-time mapping information
  • Detection of gamma and neutron sources; RPM Radiation Portal Monitor
  • Identification of gamma radionuclides and SNM detection
  • Networking of Radiation detectors and Robotics solutions
  • Safeguards and Security products for non-proliferation and threats
  • Fuel Cycle process monitoring and Fuel characterization
  • Fresh & Spent Fuel Burn-up solutions/measurements
  • Nuclear Emergency Preparedness: Training, Products, and Systems
  • Site Remediation studies; products and solutions for mitigation plans

Friday, March 17, 2017

LHCb Just Discovered New System of Five Particles

🔊 March 16, 2017 - CERN announced an exceptional new discovery that was made by the LHCb, which unveiled five new states all at once.

In a paper released, the LHCb collaboration announced the discovery of a new system of five particles all in a single analysis. The exceptionality of this discovery is that observing five new states all at once is a rather unique event.

The particles were found to be excited states – a particle state that has a higher energy than the absolute minimum configuration (or ground state) – of a particle called "Omega-c-zero", Ωc0. This Ωc0 is a baryon, a particle with three quarks, containing two “strange” and one “charm” quark.
 
The team notes that this revelation improves our understanding of quantum theory in general and, most notably, gives us new clues about the earliest moments of our universe.

Click for complete details

Monday, August 22, 2016

21st International Conference on Cyclotrons and their Applications

CAEN Electronic Instrumentation and CAENels will exhibit innovative new products during the 21st International Conference on Cyclotrons and their Applications, September 11-16 at ETH Zentrum, Rämistrasse 101, 8092 Zürich / Audimax (HG F30).
 
http://www.caen.it                         http://www.caen.it
 

We invite participants to drop by the CAEN booth where product experts will be on hand to discuss your instrumentation and power supply requirements.

              

CAEN Educational Products

CAEN recently published a 99-page catalog on Educational Product Kits.

These kits were conceived to directly contribute to the world of learning and training by providing modern tools for University level physics experiments based on the latest technologies and instrumentation.  

The educational kits cover:

  • Particle Detector Characterization with silicon photomultipliers
  • Nuclear Physics & Radioactivity, including gamma & beta-spectroscopy, and nuclear imaging by positron emission tomography (PET).
  • Particle Physics, including Cosmic Rays and Photons
  • Advanced Statistics based on Silicon Photomultiplier Detectors
Swiss customers, should you require copy of the printed catalog or any addition information or a price quotation, please do not hesitate to call 021 802 54 90 or email us.

Monday, June 20, 2016

Nuclear Spectroscopy

Over the past decade CAEN has developed a wide range of digital data acquisition instrumentation to meet different nuclear spectroscopy requirements in a flexible manner. This is the result of years of experience collaborating in research projects which required the design of electronics for innovative radiation detection. These instruments are the synthesis of CAEN acknowledged design capabilities; high performance Waveform Digitizers with Digital Pulse Processing and state-of-the-art High Voltage Power Supplies, giving rise to a powerful yet palm-size family of products

ü  Environmental Monitoring
ü  Homeland Security
ü  Cultural Heritage Preservation

The GammaSTREAM highlighted in the PDF brochure (click to downnload) is an all-in-one digital MCA tube base for gamma ray spectrometry. It is designed for portability and can be plugged on standard NaI(Tl), LaBr3(Ce), CeBr3 detectors with standard 14-pin and 10-8 stages PMTs. The first systems have already been delivered and active marketing of the product world-wide is in progress.
 

http://www.caen.it/csite/CaenProd.jsp?parent=64&idmod=940

Thursday, March 31, 2016

Searching for cavities in the Teotihuacan Pyramid of the Sun using cosmic muons

Abstract:
The Pyramid of the Sun, at Teotihuacan, Mexico, is being searched for possible hidden chambers, by means of muon attenuation measurements inside the pyramids volume. The muon tracker is located in a tunnel, running below the base and ending close to the symmetry axis of the monument. This study presents a brief description of the experimental technique and data analysis, as well as a comparison of the first year preliminary experimental results with physics simulations using GEANT4
 
Introduction
The use of cosmic muons to measure inhomogeneities in large volumes is a rapidly growing field. A classical example of this was the experiment carried out by Luis Alvarez et al. [1] who measured the attenuation of cosmic muons in the mass of the Keops Pyramid, in Giza, Egypt, while searching for hidden empty chambers. Although this technique has been applied to other practical problems, few archeological monuments present the necessary conditions to carry out a muon attenuation inspection of its volume. Among those exceptions is in the Mexican Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, hereafter referred to as Pyramid of the Sun. In a previous presentation [2] in this conference series, we described a project aimed at solving important archaeological questions concerning the Sun at Teotihuacan, using muon attenuation. Here we present an update on this project, which began its data-taking few months ago, including important experimental aspects, and details of the corresponding GEANT 4 Monte Carlo [3] simulations which are compared with our first experimental image.
 
Electronics (click for current versions): CAEN V1729 VME 4-ch, 12-bit 2 GS/s Switched Capacitor digitizer.
 
 
 

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Simple and Fast Cryocooling for Thin Films

Using the CryoLab S or CryoLab MSG you can perform various types of measurements on your thin film sample including:
  1. - Critical temperature characterisation
  2. - Van der Pauw measurements
  3. - Seebeck coefficient
  4. - Thermal properties and many more
Using The CryoLab, it is possible to characterise your thin film from 373 Kelvin down to cryogenic temperatures.



Friday, March 18, 2016

The LHC is restarting

The LHC, last among all of CERN’s accelerators, is resuming operation with beam while this issue goes to press. The year-end technical stop (YETS) started on 14 December 2015. During the 11 weeks of scheduled maintenance activities, several interventions have taken place in all of the accelerators and beamlines. They included the maintenance of the cryogenic system at several points; the replacement of 18 magnets in the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS); an extensive campaign to identify and remove thousands of obsolete cables; the replacement of the LHC beam absorbers for injection (TDIs) that are used to absorb the SPS beam if a problem occurs, providing vital protection for the LHC; and 12 LHC collimators have been dismantled and reinstalled after modification of the vacuum chambers, which restricted their movement.
 

Monday, February 1, 2016

The Future of Thin Film Control

http://www.xtronix.ch/qcm.htm

Eon-ID™ is a new film thickness controller that packages an ultra-high resolution deposition control system into a compact, rack-mountable enclosure.

Featuring integrated display, intuitive GUI, and durable architecture, Eon-ID™ offers an all-inclusive design that adapts easily to a variety of settings – ranging from industrial to laboratory to clean room to research environments. Eon-ID™ integrates well into existing rack thin film systems.

Monday, December 7, 2015

ORNL process could be white lightning to electronics industry

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Dec. 1, 2015 – A new era of electronics and even quantum devices could be ushered in with the fabrication of a virtually perfect single layer of “white graphene,” according to researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
 
The material, technically known as hexagonal boron nitride, features better transparency than its sister, graphene, is chemically inert, or non-reactive, and atomically smooth. It also features high mechanical strength and thermal conductivity. Unlike graphene, however, it is an insulator instead of a conductor of electricity, making it useful as a substrate and the foundation for the electronics in cell phones, laptops, tablets and many other devices.
 
“Imagine batteries, capacitors, solar cells, video screens and fuel cells as thin as a piece of paper,” said ORNL’s Yijing Stehle, postdoctoral associate and lead author of a paper published in Chemistry of Materials. She and colleagues are also working on a graphene hexagonal boron 2-D capacitor and fuel cell prototype that are not only “super thin” but also transparent.
 
With their recipe for white graphene, ORNL researchers hope to unleash the full potential of graphene, which has not delivered performance consistent with its theoretical value. With white graphene as a substrate, researchers believe they can help solve the problem while further reducing the thickness and increasing the flexibility of electronic devices.
 

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Applications for the CryoLab cryocooler

Measurements at cryogenic temperatures were never this easy!

We recently launched a new line of plug-n-play desktop cryocoolers for applications requiring cooling of small samples to 90 K or further down to 75 K (i.e. SQUIDs).


http://www.xtronix.ch/cryolab.htm

 
Known as CryoLab, by Kryoz Technologies of Holland, the LN2-free low-temperature analysis cooling systems allow for  characterisation measurements from room temperature down to cryogenics in a fully automated manner. Doing measurements doesn’t require any experience or know-how on cryogenics, vacuum technology or thermodynamics from the user.

 
 http://www.xtronix.ch/cryolab.htm
 
 

Friday, April 17, 2015

Time Measurements with CAEN Waveform Digitizers

In this new Application Note we focus our attention on the techniques for time measurement using waveform Digitizer. It describes the algorithms typically used for these measurements and the performances obtained in some benchmark tests using different acquistion setup. This note shows that Digitizers are capable to measure time stamps with higher accuracy (few ps resolution) compared to commercial analog solution composed by CFD and TDC modules.
 
Traditional analog devices as the Constant Fraction Discriminators (CFDs) and Time to Digital Converters (TDCs) can be very competitive in terms of channel density and cost. Highly segmented detectors are therefore often read out by analog devices featuring custom made specification to guarantee a perfect match with the experimental requirements. However the possible requirement of simultaneous measurement of energy and time poses the practical issue of complex device connections.

In some applications the implementation of a digitizer for time measurements is profitable or even necessary:
  • Applications that require an excellent timing resolution of the whole chain, of the order of few ps
  • Simultaneous acquisition of time and energy information
  • Online walk correction with integrated charge or amplitude
  • Bursts of very close pulses (e.g. Free Electron Lasers)

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

A multi-detector, digitizer based neutron depth profiling device for characterizing thin film materials

P. L. Mulligan, L. R. Cao,a) and D. Turkoglu 

Nuclear Engineering Program, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA
 
Abstract
Neutron depth profiling (NDP) is a mature, nondestructive technique used to characterize the concentration of certain light isotopes in a material as a function of depth by measuring the residual energy of charged particles in neutron induced reactions. Historically, NDP has been performed using a single detector, resulting in low intrinsic detection efficiency, and limiting the technique largely to high flux research reactors. In this work, we describe a new NDP instrument design with higher detection efficiency by way of spectrum summing across multiple detectors. Such a design is capable of acquiring a statistically significant charged particle spectrum at facilities limited in neutron flux and operation time.
 
Click to view complete article
 

Friday, October 17, 2014

Upgrade set for dark-matter detector

The XENON1T water tank

By Gemma Lavender

A vast upgrade to the XENON dark-matter experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy is set to provide a significant increase in sensitivity by being able to better spot cosmic rays masquerading as dark-matter particles. Costing US$11m and expected to start taking data in 2015, XENON1T will contain one tonne of xenon to hunt for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) – a leading dark-matter contender.
 
The XENON detector contains 100 kg of xenon and has provided the world's best limits on the collisional cross-sections between WIMPs and xenon atoms within the detector. But despite the laboratory being situated deep underground to block out most other particles, stray neutrons produced by the decay of cosmic-ray muons can still enter the detector and produce "false positives". Because the signal from the WIMPs, if they exist, will be weak, these false positives could obscure the real signal.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Pulse Shape Discrimination between neutrons and gamma rays in liquid scintillator

In this new Application Note (AN3250) Pulse Shape Discrimination between neutrons and gamma rays in liquid scintillators is studied by using DPP-PSD firmware running on CAEN digitizers. The dependence of the Figure of Merit on the digitizer sampling rate and resolution is experimentally determined.
Based on "Pulse shape discrimination with fast digitizers", L. Stevanato et al, NIMA 748 (2014) 33-38, DOI: 10.1016/j.nima.2014.02.032

For the measurements reported in this application note, a liquid scintillator coupled to a 12 dynode photo-multiplier (PMT) has been used. The anode signal was directly processed by a set of CAEN digitizers running DPP-PSD firmware:

Monday, June 23, 2014

Solid Sealing Technology Celebrates 10 Years of Excellence

In 2014, Solid Sealing Technology is happy to celebrate its ten year anniversary as a designer and manufacturer of highly engineered, hermetic products through metalizing and brazing, glass-ceramic sealing, welding and critical mechanical assembly.

Since its inception in 2004, Solid Sealing Technology has been a global provider of industry standard and custom designed products and has continually been committed to serve its customers in the high-tech market place. 
 
Throughout Solid Sealing Technology's past ten years as a member of the Watervliet Arsenal Business & Technology Partnership, the company has continually reached new heights in the manufacturing industry. Solid Sealing Technology's growth and success stems from the company's dedicated workforce and the company's awareness of the latest technology. Solid Sealing Technology has focused on delivering "Solid" Customer Service, Rapid Response, On Target Quality and Superior Customer Value over the past ten years and plans to build and strengthen these areas in the future.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

What's all the buzz about the GECO2020, and what exactly is it ?!

 GECO2020 is the all new CAEN General Control Software for over 250 High Voltage and Low Voltage Boards and Systems.
              
It features:
  • Innovative GUI
  • Dashboard capability:Allows to manage all the CAEN Power Supplies in any form factor
  • Supports Linux & Windows
  • Handles all the communication links provided in CAEN Power Supplies:
    • Ethernet
    • USB
    • Optical Link
    • Wi-Fi
GECO2020 brings the High Voltage control and management via external Host PC to an unprecedented level of easiness and compatibility.
 

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Smaller accelerators for particle physics?

It took every inch of the Large Hadron Collider's 27 km (16.8 mile) length to accelerate particles to energies high enough to discover the Higgs boson. Now, imagine an accelerator that could do the same thing in, say, the length of a football field. Or less.

That is the promise of laser-plasma accelerators, which use lasers instead of high-power radio-frequency waves to energize electrons in very short distances. Scientists have grappled with building these devices for two decades, and a new theoretical study predicts that this may be easier than previously thought.
 
The authors are Carlo Benedetti, Carl Schroeder, Eric Esarey, and Wim Leemans, physicists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center. Their paper, "Plasma wakefields driven by an incoherent combination of laser pulses: A path towards high-average power laser-plasma accelerators," appears in the May Special Issue of Physics of Plasmas, from AIP Publishing.
 
 
 

Thursday, May 8, 2014

CAEN MC2 Analyzer officially released!

The CAEN MC2 Analyzer has been specifically designed for digitizers running the Digital Pulse Processing for the Pulse Height Analysis (DPP-PHA) firmware as the DT5780 Dual Digital MCA. This software is able to completely control and manage a set of boards acquiring data simultaneously, making therefore a multi-board system a "Multichannel - Multichannel Analyzer".

MC2 Analyzer allows the user to set all the relevant DPP-PHA parameters for each acquisition channel (trigger threshold, trapezoidal filter parameters, etc.), handle the communication with the connected boards, run the data acquisition and plot both waveforms for on-line monitoring of the acquisition and histograms. It can also control the HV power supplies provided in DT5780. Moreover, it is able to perform advanced mathematical analysis on both the online and collected spectra: peak search, background subtraction, peak fitting, energy calibration, ROI selection, dead time compensation, histogram rebin and other features available.

Monday, April 14, 2014

Digital Neutron-Gamma discrimination with Liquid Scintillators

In recent years CAEN has developed a complete family of digitizers that consists of several models differing in sampling frequency, resolution, form factor and other features. Besides the use of the digitizers as waveform recorders (oscilloscope mode), CAEN offers the possibility to upload special versions of the FPGA firmware that implement algorithms for the Digital Pulse Processing (DPP); when the digitizer runs in DPP mode, it becomes a new instrument that represents a complete digital replacement of most traditional modules such as Multi-Channel Analyzers (MCAs), QDCs, TDCs, Discriminators and many others. In this application note, CAEN describes the capability of the series x720 (12 bit, 250MSps) to perform neutron-gamma discrimination based upon the digital pulse shape analysis. The development of this FPGA firmware was based upon liquid scintillating detectors of type BC501-A.
 
All detector and neutron/gamma source based tests were performed at the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL) on the campus of the Duke University in collaboration with Prof. Mohammad W. Ahmed.

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