Nuclear Inst. and Methods in Physics Research, A 903 (2018) 326–334 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Nuclear Inst. and Methods in Physics Research, A journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/nima HYTAR: A HYbrid Telescope ARray detection system for heavy ion nuclear reactions around Coulomb barrier Akhil Jhingan a, *, Gurpreet Kaur b , N. Saneesh a , R. Ahuja a , Tathagata Banerjee a , Rakesh Dubey a , Varinderjit Singh c , Ruchi Mahajan b , Meenu Thakur b , M. Kumar a , Abhishek Yadav a , B.R. Behera b , P. Sugathan a a Inter University Accelerator Centre, P.O. Box 10502, New Delhi 110067, India b Department of Physics, Panjab University, Chandigarh 160014, India c Department of Physical Sciences, IKGPTU, Kapurthala 144603, India ARTICLE INFO Keywords: -E technique Ionization chamber Silicon detector Charge sensitive pre-amplifier ABSTRACT Characteristics and performance of a HYbrid Telescope ARray (HYTAR) detector system for heavy ions are presented. The system has been developed for the study of reaction mechanisms in nuclear physics experiments around the Coulomb barrier. HYTAR apparatus is an array of hybrid telescopes, each unit comprising of a gas ionization chamber followed by a silicon detector. Gas ionization chamber, operated in axial field mode, measures the differential energy loss (), while the residual energies are measured by silicon detector. Particle identification is realized by implementing -E technique. Use of gas ionization chamber as  detector allows identification of reaction channels down to low energy thresholds ∼ 0.1 MeV/A in A ∼ 100 region. The detector system has been developed to investigate the fusion and fusion–fission dynamics by performing quasi-elastic scattering and fission angular distribution experiments. Processing of the detector signals is realized with compact and simple high density front-end electronics, which consists of custom developed low noise charge sensitive preamplifiers (operated inside vacuum) and differential driver NIM modules, followed by commercially available spectroscopy amplifiers, logic modules, analog to digital converters etc. Design features of the HYTAR and measurements performed with it are described in this article. 1. Introduction The nuclear physics program at Inter University Accelerator Centre, or IUAC (formerly Nuclear Science Centre or NSC) [1,2], is focused at heavy-ion reactions around the Coulomb barrier. These include experiments related to fusion [3] and fusion–fission reactions [4], and quasi-elastic scattering [5]. The dependence of the fusion cross-section on incident kinetic energy, called the fusion excitation function [3], provides a useful insight into the fusion mechanism. Barrier distribu- tions [6] in fusion reactions can be extracted from the experimental fu- sion excitation function. Quasi-elastic (QE) scattering, which combines elastic and inelastic scattering, and transfer reactions, yields information about the QE excitation functions and fusion barrier distributions. The study of heavy-ion induced fission fragment angular distributions [7] is a rich source of information as regards fission process, its dynamics and cross-section. Observation of anomalous fission fragment anisotropies with reference to the prediction of statistical models has led to new explanations such as presence of non-compound nuclear fission events * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: akhil@iuac.res.in, jhinganakhil@gmail.com (A. Jhingan). (pre-equilibrium fission and quasi-fission etc.). Such reactions around the Coulomb barrier are characterized by measuring the yield of reaction products at desired angles. An efficient and granular detection system with particle identification capability is required for such studies. In the past several years, variety of apparatus have been used to study different kind of nuclear reactions which includes detector arrays such as 8LP [8], MEGHA [9], INDRA [10], etc. A detector system based on gas–silicon hybrid telescopes has been developed at IUAC. The prime motive behind the development of these telescopes is to perform QE scattering and fission fragment angular distribution experiments in the energy domain near the Coulomb barrier, using the 1.5 m diameter Gen- eral Purpose Scattering Chamber (GPSC) [11] and NAND facility [12] at IUAC. The hybrid telescopes have gas ionization chambers as  detectors, providing the differential energy loss information, and silicon as  detector. Currently the array consists of 16 such telescopes. Ded- icated low noise and low power charge sensitive preamplifiers (CSPA) were developed for extracting signals from telescopes. The CSPAs are https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2018.04.064 Received 30 March 2018; Accepted 30 April 2018 0168-9002/© 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.