Waveform digitizing at 500 MHz

Experiment E787 at Brookhaven National Laboratory is designed to study the decay K/sup +/ → π/sup +/νν-bar to a sensitivity of 2 x 10/sup -10/. To achieve acceptable muon rejection it is necessary to couple traditional methods (range/energy/momentum correlation) with observation of the decay sequence in scintillator. The authors report on the design and construction of over 200 channels of relatively low cost solid state waveform digitizers. The distinguishing features are: 8 bits dynamic range, 500 MHz sampling, zero suppression on the fly, deep memory (up to .5 msec), and fast readout time (100 μsec for the entire system). The authors report on data obtained during the February-May 1988 run showing performance of the system for the observation of the above decay