0000000000222566
AUTHOR
Quirin Weitzel
Construction of large-area micro-pattern gaseous detectors
Particle physics experiments often comprise tracking detectors with areas of up to a few square meters. If a spatial resolution of the order of 100μm and high-rate capability are required, Micro Pattern Gaseous Detectors (MPGD) are a cost-effective solution. However, the construction of large-area MPGDs is challenging, since tight fabrication tolerances have to be met to guarantee a stable and homogeneous performance. A precision granite table and an automated 3-D positioning system with an attached laser sensor, both inside a laminar-flow cell, have therefore been set up in the PRISMA Detector Lab at Mainz. Currently, this infrastructure is used to produce drift panels for the upgrade of t…
Measurement of the response of Silicon Photomultipliers from single photon detection to saturation
Abstract The development of Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPM) is very dynamic and a large variety of types exists. Important SiPM characteristics include the size and number of pixels, the gain, the photon detection efficiency (PDE), the recovery time, and correlated noise. SiPMs are particularly suitable for single-photon detection and low-intensity exposures. For photon numbers (PDE corrected) reaching the number of pixels, however, the sensors saturate. In this work, we present comprehensive response measurements for state-of-the-art SiPMs using an experimental setup based on a tunable picosecond laser. Several models are applied to the measured response curves, taking particularly correla…
Development of Structured Scintillator Tiles for High-Granularity Calorimeters
Calorimeters with a fine 3-D segmentation are considered to be a very promising technology for future high-energy physics experiments, since they provide in combination with particle flow algorithms excellent jet energy resolution and particle identification capabilities. Depending on the size, millions of individual channels consisting of a photosensor coupled to a scintillator tile have to be assembled. The usage of structured plastic scintillators with optically separated segments simplifies the mass production. We present the design, production, and performance of a 36 cm × 36 cm scintillator tile divided into 144 segments matching the geometry of the SiPM-based calorimeter frontend dev…
Comparison of Silicon Photomultiplier Characteristics using Automated Test Setups
Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPM) are photo-sensors consisting of an array of hundreds to thousands pixels with a typical pitch of 10-100 μm. They exhibit an excellent photon counting and time resolution. Therefore applications of SiPMs are emerging in many fields. In order to characterize SiPMs, the PRISMA Detector Lab at Mainz has established three automated test setups. Setup-A is dedicated to measure the gain, the dark count rate and the optical crosstalk probability. The temperature dependencies are characterized by operating the setup in a climate chamber. Setup-B is an optical system to measure the photon detection efficiency. Setup-C addresses the most challenging aspect of comparing …
Optical response of highly reflective film used in the water Cherenkov muon veto of the XENON1T dark matter experiment
The XENON1T experiment is the most recent stage of the XENON Dark Matter Search, aiming for the direct detection of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). To reach its projected sensitivity, the background has to be reduced by two orders of magnitude compared to its predecessor XENON100. This requires a water Cherenkov muon veto surrounding the XENON1T TPC, both to shield external backgrounds and to tag muon-induced energetic neutrons through detection of a passing muon or the secondary shower induced by a muon interacting in the surrounding rock. The muon veto is instrumented with $84$ $8"$ PMTs with high quantum efficiency (QE) in the Cherenkov regime and the walls of the watertank…