Design, upgrade and characterization of the silicon photomultiplier front-end for the AMIGA detector at the Pierre Auger Observatory

THE PIERRE AUGER COLLABORATION (P. HANSEN PERTENECE A LA COLABORACION-ORDEN ALFABETICO)

JOURNAL OF INSTRUMENTATION

IOP PUBLISHING LTD

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2021

1748-0221

AMIGA(Auger Muons and Infill for the Ground Array) is an upgrade of the PierreAugerObservatory to complement the study of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECR) by measuringthe muon content of extensive air showers (EAS). It consists of an array of 61 water Cherenkovdetectors on a denser spacing in combination with underground scintillation detectors used formuon density measurement. Each detector is composed of three scintillation modules, with 10m2detection area per module, buried at 2.3m depth, resulting in a total detection area of 30m2. Siliconphotomultiplier sensors (SiPM) measure the amount of scintillation light generated by chargedparticles traversing the modules. In this paper, the design of the front-end electronics to process thesignals of those SiPMs and test results from the laboratory and from the Pierre Auger Observatoryare described. Compared to our previous prototype, the newelectronics shows a higher performance,higher efficiency and lower power consumption, and it has a new acquisition system with increaseddynamic range that allows measurements closer to the shower core. The new acquisition system isbased on the measurement of the total charge signal that the muonic component of the cosmic rayshower generates in the detector.