Automatic optimisation of a Parallel-Plate Avalanche Counter with Optical Readout

An automatic optimisation procedure is proposed for some operational parameters of a Parallel-Plate Avalanche Counter with Optical Readout, a detector designed for heavy-ion tracking and imaging. Exploiting differentiable programming and automatic differentiation, we model the reconstruction of the position of impinging 5.5 MeV alpha particles for different detector configurations and build an optimisation cycle that minimizes an objective function. We analyse the performance improvement using this method, exploring the potential of these techniques in detector design.