Modeling scintillator and WLS fiber signals for fast Monte Carlo simulations

SANCHEZ, F.; MEDINA-TANCO, G.

NUCLEAR INSTRUMENTS AND METHODS IN PHYSICS RESEARCH A - ACCELERATORS, SPECTROMETERS, DETECTORS AND ASSOCIATED EQUIPAMENT

Elsevier

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2010 vol. 620 p. 182 - 191

0168-9002

In this work we present a fast, robust and flexible procedure to simulate electronic signals of scintillator units: plastic scintillator material embedded with a wavelength shifter optical fiber coupled to a photo-multiplier tube which, in turn, is plugged to a front-end electronic board. The simple rationale behind the simulation chain allows to adapt the procedure to a broad range of detectors based on that kind of units. We show that, in order to produce realistic results, the simulation parameters can be properly  calibrated against laboratory measurements and used thereafter as input of the simulations. Simulated signals of atmospheric background cosmic ray muons are presented and their main features analyzed and validated using actual measured data. Conversely, for any given practical application, the present simulation scheme can be used to find an adequate combination of photo-multiplier tube and optical fiber at the prototyping stage.