Indirect high energy cosmic and gamma ray experiments require cost effective detectors and a large coverage area. Water Cherenkov detectors with large photomultiplier tubes have been commonly used for these experiments. While the photomultiplier tubes have good dynamic range and could be manufactured to larger sizes, their main drawbacks are high voltage to operate and sensitivity to magnetic fields. Silicon photomultipliers are the solid state counterparts which are insensitive to magnetic fields and operate at lower voltage, but have smaller area. At a time when solid state silicon photomultiplier vendors are growing and photomultiplier tubes declining, it is of paramount importance to develop alternative cost-effective readout schemes for future experiments. We developed a prototype water Cherenkov detector with wavelength shifting fibers and silicon photomultiplier readout. We report on the performance of this prototype for cosmic ray muons. We used Geant4 simulations to extrapolate performance at larger sizes
Future high energy gamma ray experiments propose a rich physics program ranging from understanding the particle accelerators, detecting very high energy gamma ray bursts,and probing new physics beyond the Standard Model. Water Cherenkov detectors with photomultiplier tubes have been the traditional detector technology owning to the large sizes the photomultiplier tubes can be manifactured, hence higher light yields. The drawbacks of these devices is their higher voltage of operation and a small number of manifacturers. Silicon photomultipliers are the solid-state equivalents which operate at lower voltage with large number of vendors producing them. The main drawbacks of SiPMs is their small surface area and higher dark rate. We constructed a Cherenkov detector prototype readout by silicon photomultipliers as an alternative to traditional detectors. In order to circumvent the silicon photomultipliers small area we used a light-trap and wavelength shifting block to increase light collection efficiency.
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