Qualification of a Smart Rad-Hard Fast Detection System for Radioactive Ion Beam Tagging and Diagnostics

Radioactive Ion Beams (RIBs) are a unique tool to probe nuclear structure in uncharted territories of the nuclei chart, especially for nuclei located far from the stability valley. At the Laboratori Nazionali del Sud of INFN in Catania (Italy), the construction of a novel Radioactive Ion Beams (RIBs) facility FRAISE (FRAgment In-flight SEparator) is in advanced state of construction. FRAISE makes use of light and medium mass primary beams, having power up to ≈ 2–3 kW, leading to RIBs, with unprecedented intensities in the range of ≈ 10 ³ –10 ⁷ pps, for nuclei far from and close to the stability valley, respectively. FRAISE aims at providing high-intensity and high quality RIBs for nuclear physics experiments, also serving to interdisciplinary research areas, such as medical physics. Τhe operation in radioactively activated environments because of the expected 2 kW beam lost in the dipole after the production target, impose the use of rad-hard technologies for the detection system. We are developing a dedicated instrument for the diagnostics and the tagging of RIBs along the transport line based on an array of SiC diodes, readout by an optimized fast frontend electronics and ready to be coupled with a smart DAQ with Data Real-Time Management capabilities and a dedicated software layer implementing Artificial Intelligence and machine learning techniques. This contribution deals with the experimental qualification of a workhorse of the full detection system aimed at assessing the main properties of the individual components and at making sound the estimation of the whole system performance. A full set of measurements to assess the performance of the designed system will be presented and critically analysed and the design of the final tagging system will be presented.