A Front-End ASIC for the Dimuon Arm Trigger of the ALICE Experiment

A first prototype of the front-end ASIC dedicated to the trigger detector of the dimuon arm of ALICE has been designed and tested in the "Laboratoire de Physique Corpusculaire" of Clermont-Fd.<BR>This set-up is based on the Resisitive Plate Chamber (RPC), a gaseous detector which can be operated either in streamer or avalanche mode. The streamer mode has the advantage of providing large signals that can be discriminated without amplification, whereas the avalanche mode presents a better rate capability and time resolution with conventional discrimination techniques.<BR>Since we propose to operate the RPCs in streamer mode in ALICE, we have studied a new discrimination technique in order to obtain a time resolution better than 2 ns in this mode. The method used in this dedicated circuit is described, performances and test results are given, as well as the evaluation done in the test beam of summer 2000.