A Silicon Photomultiplier Based Readout System For A Cosmic Muon Telescope; Design And Implementation

Abstract

The Cosmic Ray Telescope (CRT) is a 4 m^2 scintillator detector segmented into 16 slabs with dimensions of 25100 cm^2. The detector is located at the Department of Physics, University of Bergen, and is intended primarily for educational purposes. As part of this project, the original photomultiplier tubes have been replaced with silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs), as they offered greater benefits than PMTs for this project. An entirely new SiPM readout system has been developed, enabling low muon crossing timing uncertainty (0.6 ns). The readout system runs custom software on an Arduino microcontroller, and any number of these systems can be linked together and controlled from a computer. The design of this readout system is presented in detail, and its implementation on the CRT is described. In addition to the development of the readout system, an application was developed for the purposes of controlling the detector and performing on-line analysis of the data it generates in order to locate coincidences between scintillator slabs. Compared to traditional analogue coincidence schemes this offered greater flexibility and cost-reduction. The algorithm and capabilities of the control software are presented.