Characterization of SiPM and development of test bench modules for the next-generation cameras for Large-Sized Telescopes for Cherenkov Telescope Array

TL;DR

This paper characterizes various SiPMs for use in Large-Sized Telescopes of CTA, addressing challenges like signal summation, background suppression, and heat management, and develops test modules to validate their performance.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive characterization of SiPMs for LSTs and introduces test bench modules to evaluate their suitability for CTA's next-generation telescopes.

Findings

SiPMs from Hamamatsu meet key performance criteria for LSTs.

Developed test bench modules for SiPM performance validation.

Identified optimal SiPM configurations for background suppression and stability.

Abstract

The recent improvements in the performance of the silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) made them attractive options as photo sensors of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs). In fact, they are already adopted in some IACTs such as FACT and the Small-Sized Telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). However, the application to the Large-Sized Telescopes (LSTs) of CTA requires additional studies. As the pixel size of LSTs is larger than the nominal size of SiPMs, the signal from multiple sensors must be summed up. Also, the high detection efficiency of the night sky background (NSB) photons may degrade the telescope performance. To overcome this, the pulse width must be as small as 3 ns and the detection efficiency for NSB photons must be suppressed as much as possible. Heat generation and gain stabilization are also issues. We studied different types of SiPMs from Hamamatsu photonics and characterized them for the LST application, addressing the previous points. Also, to prove the SiPM performance in LST, we are developing a SiPM module which can be installed in the exisiting LST camera. Here we present the results of this evaluation and the status of the test bench module development.