Development of large-aperture hybrid photo-detector and readout system

We have undertaken the development of a large scale hybrid photo-detector (HPD) and new readout system comprising an ASIC preamplifier, an analog memory cell (AMC) and an FPGA (DSP) which, together, are intended to be the next generation water Cherenkov detector. We have fabricated a 13-inch HPD and have confirmed the S/N of ~10 and the time resolution better than 1 ns (sigma) for a single photon level signal. We have made and evaluated the performance of prototypes of a bipolar process charge sensitive ASIC preamplifier and 64-depth AMC to be used in the readout system