The main goal of this work was development of a new method to identify ionizing particles using an avalanche counter. The position-sensitive avalanche counter (PSAC) is a methane-filled gaseous detector operating at 4Torr (~530Pa) pressure. With a high efficiency these detectors register charged particles: from protons to fission fragments in a wide energy range from 1 to (20...30) AMeV.
  Every counter provides a fast cathode pulse for the time-of-flight measurement: T=L/V. Two coordinate signals "X" and "Y" from anode wires are used to correct the flight path: L² = Focus distance² + X² + Y². The particle energy loss dE in a gaseous gap dx = 3mm is proportional to the particle charge over its velocity squared: dE/dx ~ (Z/V)² (Bethe-Bloch formula). Therefore the combined "dE-TOF" mesurements allow separating particles according to their electrical charges.
  The spectrometry system comprises an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and a multi-channel, fast, programmable amplifier to adapt the "dE/dx" signals to the ADC. Both, the amplifier and the ADC are included in the CAMAC readout branch of the FOBOS data acquisition system. The amplifier was designed using the "OrCad" v.3.0 development system and the "MultiCup" v.2.0 simulation tool.
  The diploma work had been done at the FLNR JINR. The scientific advisers were Dr. O.V.Strekalovsky and Dr. H.-G.Ortlepp. The oral presentation took place at the Physical Faculty of the USTU in February 1995. The proceedings of this diploma work won a price on the student's competition "Conversion-95" held by the Russian Defense Ministry in 1995 over the Ural and Siberia regions. After the USTU graduation I was awarded the "Engineer-Physicist" title and the master-of-science degree.