Detection of light signals is crucial to a wide range of particle detectors. In particular, efficient detection of vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) light will provide new opportunities for some novel detectors currently being developed, but is technically challenging. In this article, we characterized the performance of Hamamatsu VUV4 silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) for detecting VUV argon scintillation light without wavelength shifting. Using a customized cryogenic amplifier design, we operated two models of VUV4 SiPMs inside liquid argon and thoroughly examined their direct sensitivities to liquid argon scintillation. In addition to describing their cryogenic performance, we measured a photon detection efficiency of 14.7−2.4+1.1% and 17.2−3.0+1.6% at 128 nm for these two VUV4 models for operation at 4 V of overvoltage, with the main uncertainty arising from the SiPM reflectivity for VUV light.
@article{arxiv.2202.02977,
title = {Performance of Hamamatsu VUV4 SiPMs for detecting liquid argon scintillation},
author = {Teal Pershing and Jingke Xu and Ethan Bernard and James Kingston and Eli Mizrachi and Jason Brodsky and Alessandro Razeto and Priyanka Kachru and Adam Bernstein and Emilija Pantic and Igor Jovanovic},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.02977},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
21 pages, 11 figures, accepted by JINST. Minor typos corrected in paper. Phrasing modifications made in discussion of afterpulsing results. Comparison of amplifier gain to reference design added. LLNL IM number appended