Large scale characterization and calibration strategy of a SiPM-based camera for gamma-ray astronomy

TL;DR

This paper details the calibration strategy and performance evaluation of a large-scale SiPM-based camera for gamma-ray astronomy, demonstrating its charge and time resolution capabilities in a prototype setting.

Contribution

It introduces a novel calibration approach for a SiPM-based gamma-ray telescope camera and evaluates its performance using the first prototype.

Findings

Successful calibration of the camera demonstrated good charge and time resolution.

The calibration strategies are effective both off-site and on-site.

The prototype camera meets the performance requirements for gamma-ray observations.

Abstract

The SST-1M is a 4-m diameter mirror Davies-Cotton gamma-ray telescope. It has been designed to cover the energy range above 500 GeV and to be part of an array of telescopes separated by 150-200 m. Its innovative camera is featuring large area hexagonal silicon photo-multipliers as photon detectors and a fully digital trigger and readout system. Here, the strategy and the methods for its calibration are presented, together with the obtained results. In particular, the off and on-site calibration strategies are demonstrated on the first camera prototype. The performances of the camera in terms of charge and time resolution are described.