The Cosmic Rack (CRack) consists of ten vertically stacked rows of silicon stip modules. At both the top and bottom of this stack is a rectangular scintillaor, roughly the cross-sectional area of the rows of modules. Each scintillator has a photo multiplier tube at each end, giving four total inputs to the CRack trigger system.

Images and schematics of the CRack system can be found at : http://cms-ul-tmb.web.cern.ch/CMS_TMB/personal/anttila/crack/drawings.htm

PMT Bias Voltage

The four PMT's are powered by a CAEN forty channel high voltage power supply. The table below includes a signal frequency scan in each channel, in a voltage range of 1700-2100V (Performed on 17/06/2013 by Stephen Sirisky). Channels A/B correspond to the top scintillator, and C/D to the bottom.

Total number of signals / 100 sec.

To obtain a trigger rate of ~10 Hz, all four channels should be set to 2100 V. The trigger rate quickly diminishes with any lower voltages (even on individual channels), and higher voltages provide little gain in frequency due to the triple round coincidence required.

Trigger Electronics

The cosmic rack trigger includes the following electronics:

• Quad Discriminator, LeCroy 621AL
• Linear Fan In / Fan Out, LeCroy 428F
• (2) Four-Fold Coincidence Unit, LeCroy 465
• Octal Meantimer, LeCroy 624
• Quad Scaler and Counter Timer, CAEN N145
• Dual Timer, CAEN 2255B

Timing Measurements

Discriminators and First Level Coincidence Units

Other Coincidence Units

(A/C) / (B/D) Coincidence

• 20 ns pulse width
• Starts 15 ns from the beginning of a B/D coincidence pulse
• Starts 12 ns from the beginning of an A/C coincidence pulse

• 5-10 ns pulse width
• Starts 15 ns from beginning of (A/C)/(B/D) coincidence pulse
• Starts 15 ns from beginning og Mean Timer pulse