Frankfurt 2014 – scientific programme

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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 14: Instrumentierung

HK 14.9: Talk

Monday, March 17, 2014, 18:45–19:00, HZ 8

Geiger-mode Avalanche Photodiodes for the Readout of Scintillating Fibers — •Alexander Hahn — Technische Universität München

Following up on the PAMELA collaboration's detection of trapped antiprotons in low-Earth orbit, the Technische Universität München has founded a student-developed endeavor to measure the yet-unknown low-energy antiproton flux in the Van Allen belt. The satellite-borne experiment will consist of a cube of scintillating fibers, and will discern antiprotons by detecting the pions of their characteristic annihilation. We have built a 128-channel prototype detector to test the ability to measure low-energy particles with scintillating fibers and Geiger-mode avalanche photodiodes (G-APD).

After testing several different fiber types and APD--fiber coupling methods, we built the prototype with aluminum-wrapped Kuraray fibers. Additionly we have compared and contrasted KETEK and Hamamatsu G-APDs, studying in particular their dark count rates, cross talk intensities, photo-detection efficiencies, temperature dependences, and gains. I will present our findings as well as an introduction to the experiment's aims and schematic structure.

This project is supported by the DFG Excellence Cluster Universe(Exc 153).