Scintillating Fibre Detector for the Mu3e Experiment

TL;DR

This paper describes a compact scintillating fibre detector designed for the Mu3e experiment, achieving high efficiency and excellent timing and spatial resolution to detect rare muon decays.

Contribution

It introduces a novel scintillating fibre detector with integrated readout electronics, optimized for high precision and minimal material budget in the Mu3e experiment.

Findings

Time resolution around 250 ps

Detection efficiency greater than 97%

Spatial resolution of approximately 100 μm

Abstract

We present a compact scintillating fibre timing detector developed for the Mu3e experiment. Mu3e is one of the flagship experiments of the Swiss particle physics scene, aiming to search for the charged lepton flavour violating (neutrinoless) muon decay $\mu^+ \rightarrow e^+e^-e^+$. Mu3e is planned to start taking data in 2025 at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, using the most intense continuous surface muon beam in the world (10$^8$ muons per second). At the University of Geneva, together with partners from ETH Zurich, we are developing a scintillating fibre detector formed by staggering three layers of 250 $\mu m$ diameter round scintillating fibres. The fibre ribbons are coupled at both ends to multi-channel silicon photo-multiplier arrays, which are read out with the MuTRiG ASIC, specifically developed for this experiment. This presentation is focused on the performances of the scintillating fibre detector, notably on the time resolution around 250 ps, the efficiency greater than 97\% and the spatial resolution of $\sim$ 100 $\mu m$. In this presentation, we also include the challenges overcome to build this very thin scintillating fibre detector, having a thickness smaller than 0.2\% of the radiation length. Furthermore, we discuss the operation and performance of the MuTRiG ASIC, used for reading out the 3072 channels of the fibre detector.