Digitizing data acquisition and time-of-flight pulse processing for ToF-ERDA

A versatile system to capture and analyze signals from multi channel plate (MCP) based time-of-flight detectors and ionization based energy detectors such as silicon diodes and gas ionization chambers (GIC) is introduced. The system is based on commercial digitizers and custom software. It forms a part of a ToF-ERDA spectrometer, which has to be able to detect recoil atoms of many different species and energies. Compared to the currently used analogue electronics the digitizing system provides comparable time-of-flight resolution and improved hydrogen detection efficiency, while allowing the operation of the spectrometer be studied and optimized after the measurement. The hardware, data acquisition software and digital pulse processing algorithms to suit this application are described in detail.