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The aim of this review is to provide, whenever possible, a complete picture of the evolution of methods and systems for data readout, acquisition, and transfer at experimental nuclear physics setups over recent years for specialists who use electronics in experiments or measurements in applied research. In view of the large body of information, this review is divided into two parts; medium (according to the contemporary measures) and large systems for nuclear physics setups and accelerator experiments are considered in this, the second, part. Both parts have a common classification table and common numbering of cited papers and figures.

The aim of this review is to provide, whenever possible, a complete picture of the evolution of methods and systems for data readout, acquisition, and transfer at experimental nuclear physics setups over recent years for specialists who use electronics in experiments or measurements in applied research. In view of the large body of information this review is divided into two parts; small and geographically distributed systems are mainly considered in the first part. Both parts have a common classification table and common numbering of cited papers and figures.

The purpose of this review is to give experts, who use electronic techniques in experiments or measurements in applied areas, whenever it is possible, a complete picture of the past five-year rapid development of application specific integrated circuits for readouts and processing of signals from up-to-date detectors of nuclear particles. Due to the large information content, the review is formally divided into two parts. The use of the application specific integrated circuits in different experimental or measuring plants is considered in this second part. Both parts have the common classification table, numbering of cited papers, drawings, and formulas.

The purpose of this review is to give experts, who use electronic procedures in experiments or measurements in applied areas, whenever it is possible, the complete picture of the past 5-year rapid development of application specific integrated circuits for readouts and processing of signals from up-to-date nuclear particle detectors. Due to the large information content, the review is formally divided into two parts. The evolution history of the application specific integrated circuits for different types of detectors is considered in the first part. Both parts have the common classification table, common numeration of cited papers, drawings, and formulas.

The results of the SERP-E-184 experiment at the U-70 accelerator (IHEP, Protvino) are presented. Interactions of the 70GeV proton beam with carbon, silicon and lead targets were studied to detect decays of charmed \(D^{0}\), \(\bar{D}^{0}\), \(D^{+}\), \(D^{-}\) mesons and \(\Lambda_{c}^{+}\) baryon near their production threshold. Measurements of lifetimes and masses have shown a good agreement with PDG data. The inclusive cross-sections of charm production and their A-dependences have been obtained. The yields of these particles are compared with the theoretical predictions and the data of other experiments. The measured cross-section of the total open charm production ( \(\sigma_{\rm tot}(c\bar{c}) = 7.1 \pm 2.3({\rm stat}) \pm 1.4({\rm syst})\) μb/nucleon) at the collision c.m. energy \(\surd s = 11.8\) GeV is well above the QCD model predictions. The contributions of different kinds of charmed particles to the total cross-section of the open charm production in proton-nucleus interactions vary with energy.

The stages of development and the current status of the versatile “Spectrometer with a Vertex Detector” setup designed for physics experiments at the U-70 accelerator of the Institute for High Energy Physics (Protvino) is described. The main detectors of the setup are the vertex detector based on silicon microstrip detectors, the wide-aperture magnetic spectrometer based on multiwire proportional chambers, and the lead-glass hodoscope γ detector. In the setup, there is a fast two-level trigger system for selecting required particle interactions. The key characteristics of the setup systems are presented, and the physical results obtained on it are briefly listed.

An adapter of the PCI bus is intended for connecting peripherals with separate address and data buses to IBM PC personal computers. The adapter, which is the interface card of the PCI bus, converts signals of this bus into signals of Multibus and EUR 4600 cable trunks. The protocols of both buses are implemented with the use of the ER1K50QC208 field programmable gate array (ALTERA). The minimal attainable duration of the 16-bit data transmission cycle is ∼0.5 μs. The address range is 16–24 bits.

A classical signal which agrees with the ideas of mathematical analysis on infinitesimal quantities possesses an infinite information capacity, which contradicts the concept of information that is finite by definition. A real signal should have some “threshold” for determining a finite step between its distinguishable states and the “limit” for the possible number of states.

The design and the characteristics of a drift tracker for the SVD-2 setup at the U-70 accelerator of the Institute for High Energy Physics (Protvino, Russia) are described. The drift tracker has been developed to improve the quality of track reconstruction in high-multiplicity events. It is composed of 2304 drift tubes with a diameter of 6 mm and a sensitive region 500–900 mm long. The distance between a track and the anode wire is determined from the drift time. The coordinate resolution and the detection efficiency of the tubes have been determined from the data of the accelerator run in 2006.

Firmware for checking the electronic equipment for recording signals of the hodoscope γ-quantum detector is described. The detector has 1344 channels for measuring charges of nanosecond pulses arriving from outputs of photomultiplier tubes. The testing system is intended to test the electronics at each level of its hierarchical structure and also to perform the initial check of the γ-quantum detector itself.

A precision vertex microstrip detector has been developed for the spectrometer with a vertex detector (SVD) setup on which the properties of hadrons and short-lived unstable particles are investigated on the accelerator of the Institute for High Energy Physics. The structure and the design of the main detector components—microstrip sensors and an active target—are presented, as well as techniques for manufacturing them. The readout electronics, the data acquisition system, and its software are also described. The accuracy in determining the vertex position is 70–250 µm along the beam axis and 8–15 µm in a transverse direction at a throughput of 500–1000 events/s.

A construction and functions of the bench for checking the electronic equipment for recording signals from drift chambers, which is composed of 1500 channels for measuring nanosecond time intervals, is described. The special attention is paid to realizing the software-based functions of data control, observation, and monitoring.

Electronic equipment developed for reading, shaping, and recording signals from microstrip sensors of the vertex detector of the SVD-2 setup is described. The configuration of the vertex detector sensors, construction of signal-reading cards, and structure and functions of the recording modules are considered. The obtained characteristics are analyzed.

The electronic equipment for data processing and reading designed for the vertex detector of the SVD-2 setup is described. The structure of basic modules, their characteristics, and software for data acquisition are considered.

Hardware and software of environmental monitoring systems for semiconductor microstrip detectors of the SCT silicon tracker is described. The work has been done at the CERN (Geneva, Switzerland) as part of the ATLAS project for the LHC accelerator.

Data from the SVD-2 experiment that were obtained at the IHEP accelerator in 70-GeV/c proton-nucleus interactions are analyzed with the aim of searches for an exotic Θ+ baryon that decays through the pK S 0 channel. The reaction pN → pK S 0 + X characterized by a bounded multiplicity of charged secondaries is used for this analysis. A resonance of mass M = 1526 ± 3(stat.) ± 3(syst.) MeV/c 2 and width Γ < 24 MeV/c 2 is observed in the invariant-mass spectrum of the pK S 0 system at a statistical significance of 5.6σ. The mass and the width of this resonance correspond to the recently found positive-strangeness Θ+ baryon, which was predicted to be an exotic baryon consisting of five quarks (pentaquark), $$uudd\bar s$$ . The total cross section for the production of a Θ+ baryon in pA interactions is estimated at a value within the range 30–120 μb for x F ≥ 0. An analysis of the A dependence of the cross section for Θ+-baryon production does not reveal a significant deviation from the A dependence for inelastic events (∼A 0.7).

The software and hardware packages developed for testing the SVD-2's wide-aperture magnetic spectrometer on the basis of multiwire proportional chambers is described. The total number of signal wires in the chambers is ∼15000. Considering that the setup includes a great number of channels and occupies a large area, the diagnostic facilities ensure the phased testing of the spectrometer components. The equipment described is also used to adjust the parameters of the data acquisition electronics by automatically measuring the delayed coincidence responses of the proportional chambers.

The hierarchy of data acquisition actions, the structure of network messages, and the organization of testing in the software of a parameter monitoring system of a large detector intended for experiments in particle physics and containing thousands of monitoring channels is described. The work was carried out at CERN (Geneva) as part of the program aimed at creating the ATLAS Detector for the LHC accelerator.

The organization of the data collection in the parameter monitoring system of a large detector intended for experiments in particle physics is described. The work was carried out at CERN (Geneva, Switzerland) as part of the program for creating the ATLAS detector of the LHC accelerator. The detector can contain several thousand monitoring channels, and the nominal monitoring period is ∼20 s.

The interface controller of an IBM personal computer, which is supported by the CAMAC–COMPEX protocol, is described. This controller is used in the central crate of the data acquisition and readout system of the magnetic spectrometer of the SVD setup. The system has 28 addressable crates; the controller's response speed in the central crate is 2.3 μs/word.

Data-readout electronics for a wide-aperture magnetic spectrometer is described. The magnetic spectrometer is based on 1- and 1.5-m-wide proportional chambers with ∼18 000 signal wires. The structure of the system, the data-readout algorithms, and the measured characteristics are discussed.

Charmed-particle production in pp interactions at 70 GeV/c was studied with the SVD setup at the IHEP accelerator (Protvino). The experimental procedure used and the data-selection methods are described. Data obtained by using a quickly cycling bubble chamber and a magnetic spectrometer are analyzed. The number of inelastic-interaction events recorded in the chamber is 109000, with the charge multiplicity being nch/4. The corresponding statistics are 4.96 event/µb. Part of the events were recorded in the magnetic spectrometer. Three three-prong decays of charged particles near the primary vertex are found on the films, two of these being recorded with the spectrometer. All three are interpreted as D− decays. Two neutral decays observed simultaneously in the chamber and in the spectrometer are interpreted as \(\bar D^0 \) decays. The total cross section for \(c\bar c\) production in the Feynman variable region −1

The ZEUS experimental setup operating at DESY (German Electron Synchrotron) is a many-purpose detector aimed at studying high-energy interactions of electrons and protons. The ZEUS comprises 20 subdetectors (components). One of them is the slow-control data detector described in this paper.

The slow-control system operation consists in periodic polling of all parameters that need to be controlled and comparing values obtained with admissible deviations from normal values. This is necessary for the safe functioning of the facility and for reliability of the experimental data obtained. For modern experimental setups, when a large number of parameters need to be monitored, the problem of access to the slow-control data becomes complex. In this paper, a method for organizing the access to the slow-control channels is described. The method is based on using two search structures corresponding to the common database for channels and parameters.

The results of E-190 experiment (project Thermalization) with 50 GeV proton beam irradiation of SVD-2 setup are presented. MC simulation has shown the linear dependence of number of photons detected in electromagnetic calorimeter and the average number of neutral pions. Multiplicity distribution of neutral pion, N0, for total number of particles in the event, Ntot = Nch + N0, are obtained with corrections on the setup acceptance, triggering and efficiency of the event reconstruction. The scaled variance of neutral pion fluctuations, ω = D/ < N0 >, versus total multiplicity is measured. The fluctuations increase at Ntot > 18. According to quantum statistics models this behavior can indicate a pion condensate formation in the high pion multiplicity system. This effect has been observed for the first time.