Calibration methods of charge sensitive amplifiers at the Colorado dust accelerator.

Charge sensitive amplifiers (CSAs) are electronic integrating circuits frequently used for detecting quick charge pulses such as those produced in semiconductor detector devices and electron multipliers. One of the limitations of highly sensitive CSA circuits is the accuracy with which they can be calibrated due to the necessity of using injection capacitors on the order of a few pF, which are difficult to calibrate and to disentangle from other stray capacitance in calibration circuits. This paper presents an alternate method for calibrating the electronics for CSAs with conductive detectors, referred to as the "external conductor" method, using the detector itself to form the injection circuit.