Abstract

Abstract

The Q-weak experiment at Jefferson Lab will make a precision measurement of the weak mixing angle using parity-violating electron scattering from the proton. The Q-weak apparatus will use a tracking system to measure the electron elastic scattering profile using a set of detectors that are separate from the main detector systems. The Region 1 detector of the Q-weak experiment is the first detector encountered by scattered particles in this tracking system. The R1 detector uses Gas Electron Multiplication (GEM) to amplify the ionization signal generated by scattered electrons traveling through the detector. The resulting cloud of charge generated by these preamplifiers is directed, by and external electric field, towards a charge collector which allows a determination of the location of the charge deposited on the charge collector. A signal processing integrated circuit, design at CERN for the TOTEM experiment, amplifies and discriminates the analog charge deposited on the charge collector converting it into a digital yes/no hit signal. This serialized data is then transferred to permanent data files. Once in this form, these files can then later be parsed to determine position of particles passing through the detector. The focus of this thesis is on the process of querying the VFAT2 ICs on the GEM detectors, collecting all of the simultaneous data packets from the VFATs into one large data file using an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), and then transferring this large data file to a Linux-based computer for future parsing.