Muon counting using silicon photomultipliers in the AMIGA detector of the Pierre Auger observatory

THE PIERRE AUGER OBSERVATORY (PATRICIA HANSEN PERTENECE A LA COLABORACION)

JOURNAL OF INSTRUMENTATION

IOP PUBLISHING LTD

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2017

1748-0221

Abstract: AMIGA (Auger Muons and Infill for the Ground Array) is an upgrade of the PierreAuger Observatory designed to extend its energy range of detection and to directly measure themuon content of the cosmic ray primary particle showers. The array will be formed by an infillof surface water-Cherenkov detectors associated with buried scintillation counters employed formuon counting. Each counter is composed of three scintillation modules, with a 10m2 detectionarea per module. In this paper, a new generation of detectors, replacing the current multi-pixelphotomultiplier tube (PMT) with silicon photo sensors (aka. SiPMs), is proposed. The selectionof the new device and its front-end electronics is explained. A method to calibrate the countingsystem that ensures the performance of the detector is detailed. This method has the advantage ofbeing able to be carried out in a remote place such as the one where the detectors are deployed.High efficiency results, i.e. 98% efficiency for the highest tested overvoltage, combined with a lowprobability of accidental counting (2 %), show a promising performance for this new system.