Dresden 2013 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 45: Instrumentation

HK 45.7: Vortrag

Dienstag, 5. März 2013, 18:30–18:45, HSZ-405

A Scintillator Based Proton Detector with Silicon Photomultiplier Readout for the Neutron Lifetime Experiment PENeLOPE — •Wolfgang Gebauer — Technische Universität München, Physik Department, E18

The lifetime of the free neutron, a major characteristic in the Standard Model of particle physics, is still not sufficiently well known: the previous measurements showed large discrepancies. Due to this fact, the new neutron lifetime experiment PENeLOPE is developed at Physik-Department of Technische Universität München.

Therefore ultra-cold neutrons are stored in a superconducting magneto-gravitational trap. Beside the detection of the neutrons, the low-energy protons emerging from the neutron beta decay will be accelerated and used for the determination of the neutron lifetime.

As the proton detector is located in the cryostat above the storage volume, it has to work at cryogenic temperatures and in high magnetic fields of about 1 T. A possible solution would be a scintillation detector using pure CsI crystals which have a high light yield at low temperatures. Due to the low energy of the irradiating protons the light emission is still low, thus silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) are a good option for the light detection system.

This contribution shows the characterization of SiPM and the development of CsI readout with SiPM at cryogenic temperatures.

This work is supported by the Excellence Cluster “Origin and Structure of the Universe”, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Maier-Leibnitz-Laboratorium, Garching.