Test and characterization of 400 Hamamatsu R5912-MOD photomultiplier tubes for the ICARUS T600 detector

TL;DR

This paper reports on the testing and characterization of 400 Hamamatsu R5912-MOD photomultiplier tubes for the ICARUS T600 liquid argon detector, ensuring their performance meets experimental requirements at both room and cryogenic temperatures.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive evaluation of PMT performance at cryogenic temperatures, confirming their suitability for large-scale neutrino detection in the ICARUS T600.

Findings

All PMTs met the performance requirements for ICARUS T600.

Cryogenic testing showed acceptable parameter stability at liquid argon temperatures.

A subset of 360 PMTs was selected for final detector installation.

Abstract

ICARUS T600 will be operated as far detector of the Short Baseline Neutrino program at Fermilab (USA), which foresees three liquid argon time projection chambers along the Booster Neutrino Beam line to search for a LSND-like sterile neutrino signal. The detector employs 360 photomultiplier tubes, Hamamatsu model R5912-MOD, suitable for cryogenic applications. A total of 400 PMTs were procured from Hamamatsu and tested at room temperature to evaluate the performance of the devices and their compliance to detect the liquid argon scintillation light in the T600 detector. Furthermore 60 units were also characterized at cryogenic temperature, in liquid argon bath, to evaluate any parameter variation which could affect the scintillation light detection. All the tested PMTs were found to comply with the requirements of ICARUS T600 and a subset of 360 specimens was selected for the final installation in the detector.