Performance of compact plastic scintillator strips with WLS-fiber and PMT/SiPM readout

TL;DR

This study evaluates the performance of compact plastic scintillator strips with WLS-fiber readout, comparing PMT and SiPM coupling, to identify suitable designs for cosmic-ray muon detection in limited spaces.

Contribution

It introduces and compares different readout configurations of plastic scintillator strips, highlighting the effectiveness of SiPM coupling for compact cosmic-ray muon detectors.

Findings

Double-end readout improves performance over single-end.

SiPM coupling performs comparably to PMT in the tested setup.

The proposed design is suitable for limited-space muon veto applications.

Abstract

This work presents the design and performance study of compact strips of plastic scintillator with WLS-fiber readout in a dimension of 0.1 * 0.02 * 2 m3, which evaluates as a candidate for cosmic-ray muon detector for JUNO-TAO. The strips coupling with 3-inch PMTs are measured and compared between the single-end and double-end readout options first, and the strip of double-end option coupling with SiPM is further measured and compared with the results of that with the PMTs. The performance of the strips determined by a detailed survey along their length with cosmic-ray muon after a detailed characterization of the used 3-inch PMTs and SiPMs.The proposed compact strip of plastic scintillator with WLS-fiber coupling with SiPM provides a good choice for cosmic-ray muon veto detector for limited detector dimension in particular.