INFN Camera demonstrator for the Cherenkov Telescope Array
Abstract
The Cherenkov Telescope Array is a world-wide project for a new generation of ground-based Cherenkov telescopes of the Imaging class with the aim of exploring the highest energy region of the electromagnetic spectrum. With two planned arrays, one for each hemisphere, it will guarantee a good sky coverage in the energy range from a few tens of GeV to hundreds of TeV, with improved angular resolution and a sensitivity in the TeV energy region better by one order of magnitude than the currently operating arrays. In order to cover this wide energy range, three different telescope types are envisaged, with different mirror sizes and focal plane features. In particular, for the highest energies a possible design is a dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder optical scheme, with a compact focal plane. A silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) based camera is being proposed as a solution to match the dimensions of the pixel (angular size of ~ 0.17 degrees). INFN is developing a camera demonstrator made by 9 Photo Sensor Modules (PSMs, 64 pixels each, with total coverage 1/4 of the focal plane) equipped with FBK (Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy) Near UltraViolet High Fill factor SiPMs and Front-End Electronics (FEE) based on a Target 7 ASIC, a 16 channels fast sampler (up to 2GS/s) with deep buffer, self-trigger and on-demand digitization capabilities specifically developed for this purpose. The pixel dimensions of mm lead to a very compact design with challenging problems of thermal dissipation. A modular structure, made by copper frames hosting one PSM and the corresponding FEE, has been conceived, with a water cooling system to keep the required working temperature. The actual design, the adopted technical solutions and the achieved results for this demonstrator are presented and discussed.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1509.01979,
title = {INFN Camera demonstrator for the Cherenkov Telescope Array},
author = {G. Ambrosi and M. Ambrosio and C. Aramo and B. Bertucci and E. Bissaldi and M. Bitossi and S. Brasolin and G. Busetto and R. Carosi and S. Catalanotti and M. A. Ciocci and R. Consoletti and P. Da Vela and F. Dazzi and A. De Angelis and B. De Lotto and F. de Palma and R. Desiante and T. Di Girolamo and C. Di Giulio and M. Doro and D. D'Urso and G. Ferraro and F. Ferrarotto and F. Gargano and N. Giglietto and F. Giordano and G. Giraudo and M. Iacovacci and M. Ionica and M. Iori and F. Longo and M. Mariotti and S. Mastroianni and M. Minuti and A. Morselli and R. Paoletti and G. Pauletta and R. Rando and G. Rodriguez Fernandez and A. Rugliancich and D. Simone and C. Stella and A. Tonachini and P. Vallania and L. Valore and V. Vagelli and V. Verzi and C. Vigorito},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1509.01979},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
In Proceedings of the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2015), The Hague, The Netherlands. All CTA contributions at arXiv:1508.05894