Characterization and On-Field Performance of the MuTe Silicon Photomultipliers

The Muon Telescope, MuTe, is an instrument for imaging volcanoes in Colombia. It consists of a scintillator tracking system and a water Cherenkov detector for particle energy measurement. The Muon Telescope operates autonomously in high-altitude environments where the temperature gradient reaches up...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jesús Peña-Rodríguez, Juan Sánchez-Villafrades, Hernán Asorey, Luis A. Núñez
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2023-01-01
Series:Instruments
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2410-390X/7/1/7
Description
Summary:The Muon Telescope, MuTe, is an instrument for imaging volcanoes in Colombia. It consists of a scintillator tracking system and a water Cherenkov detector for particle energy measurement. The Muon Telescope operates autonomously in high-altitude environments where the temperature gradient reaches up to 10 °C. In this work, we characterize the telescope silicon photomultipliers’ breakdown voltage, gain, and noise for temperature variations spanning 0 to 40 °C. We demonstrate that the discrimination threshold for the Muon Telescope hodoscope must be above 5 photo-electrons to avoid contamination due to dark count, crosstalk, and afterpulsing. We also assess the detector counting rate depending on day-night temperature variations.
ISSN:2410-390X