A "cold" discharge mechanism for low-noise fast charge amplifiers

We present a new discharge mechanism for low-noise fast preamplifiers for γ-ray spectroscopy. Such circuital solution has been conceived in the framework of the INFN Mars experiment, which imposes stringent requirements for both the signal-to-noise ratio and the rise time of the front-end preamplifiers. Basically a non-inverting low-gain (G) stage is interposed between the output of a conventional charge amplifier and the high-value feedback resistor. It can be easily found that this adds no noise but the discharge time constant is reduced by a factor G, because the voltage drop across the resistor is G times as high, and such is the discharge current. A similar effect could also be obtained in the standard charge amplifier by diminishing the feedback resistor by a factor G. But this would yield an increase of a factor G of its thermal current noise. In this sense our equivalent discharge resistor is "cold", because it carries a current noise G times as low. This permits us to use a relatively large feedback capacitance which inherently yields a fast risetime. A rise time of 15 ns and an overall electronic noise of 1.03 keV fwhm at 3 μs shaping time have been obtained, with an input capacitance of 33 pF, 1.5 pF feedback capacitor, 150 μs discharge time constant.