Development of an external readout electronics for a hybrid photon detector

The pixel hybrid photon detectors currently installed in the LHCb Cherenkov system encapsulate readout electronics in the vacuum tube envelope. The LHCb upgrade and the new trigger system will require their replacement with new photon detectors. The baseline photon detector candidate is the multi-anode photomultiplier. A hybrid photon detector with external readout electronics has been proposed as a backup option. This master thesis covers a R & D phase to investigate this latter concept. Extensive studies of the initial electronics system underlined the noise contributions from the Beetle chip used as front-end readout ASIC and from the ceramic carrier of the photon detector. New front-end electronic boards have been developed and made fully compatible with the existing LHCb-RICH infrastructure. With this compact readout system, Cherenkov photons have been successfully detected in a real particle beam environment. The proof-of-concept of a hybrid photon detector with external readout electronics was validated and its feasibility and potential were demonstrated.