Philippe Arsenault

and 6 more

Future particle physics experiments such as nEXO and ARGO have will dedicated state-of-the-art electronics for their detector. As this electronics will most likely be in the cryogenic environment, major challenges arise for their design from the detector readout to data communication. Their requirements for radiopurity and chemical constitution add further constraints on the type of usable materials. This paper presents a silicon photonics based communication system for those experiments. This system aims to be fully integrated within a photodetection module, connecting large arrays of photon-to-digital converters to a large-scale data acquisition system. The novelty of the design relies on having no laser source in the cryostat, a major benefit for power consumption. This approach leads to a set of considerations for the design of each component of the system and the need of designing a system in a comprehensive « top-down » approach to ensure the compatibility of the components. Key challenges related to cryogenic operation of the devices are highligthed alongside our approach to move from the prototype stage towards a complete system. We present the design of the system architecture, the design of the SiP chip (AMF foundry), the design and simulation results of 65 nm TSMC CMOS SiP Driver, the design and bandwidth results of the FPGA DAQ integration and the outline of a packaging solution for optical communication within cryogenic experiments with an overview of the remaining challenges to overcome.