Development of the photo-diode subsystem for the HERD calorimeter double-readout
/ Authors
O. Adriani, M. Antonelli, A. Basti, E. Berti, P. Betti, G. Bigongiari, L. Bonechi, M. Bongi, V. Bonvicini, S. Bottai
and 33 more authors
P. Brogi, G. Castellini, C. Checchia, J. Casaus, X. Cui, Y. Dong, R. D’Alessandro, S. Detti, F. Giovacchini, N. Finetti, P. Maestro, P. Marrocchesi, X. Liu, J. Marin, G. Martinez, N. Mori, L. Pacini, P. Papini, C. Pizzolotto, S. Ricciarini, P. Spillantini, O. Starodubtsev, L. Stiaccini, Z. Tang, A. Tiberio, E. Vannuccini, M. Velasco, R. Wang, Z. Wang, M. Xu, G. Zampa, N. Zampa, Ling Zhang
/ Abstract
The measurement of cosmic-ray individual spectra provides unique information regarding the origin and propagation of astro-particles. Due to the limited acceptance of current space experiments, protons and nuclei around the “knee” region (∼ 1 PeV) can only be observed by ground based experiments. Thanks to an innovative design, the High Energy cosmic-Radiation Detection (HERD) facility will allow direct observation up to this energy region: the instrument is mainly based on a 3D segmented, isotropic and homogeneous calorimeter which properly measures the energy of particles coming from each direction and it will be made of about 7500 LYSO cubic crystals. The read-out of the scintillation light is done with two independent systems: the first one based on wave-length shifting fibers coupled to Intensified scientific CMOS cameras, the second one is made of two photo-diodes with different active areas connected to a custom front-end electronics. This photo-diode system is designed to achieve a huge dynamic range, larger than 107, while having a small power consumption, few mW per channel. Thanks to a good signal-to-noise ratio, the capability of a proper calibration, by using signals of both non-interacting and showering particles, is also guaranteed. In this paper, the current design and the performance obtained by several tests of the photo-diode read-out system are discussed.
Journal: Journal of Instrumentation