Speaker
Description
New planned and in-development experiments for direct cosmic ray detection in balloons or satellites use plastic scintillators readout by silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) to provide timing information with resolutions in the order of picoseconds (ps). This information is essential for triggering, vetoing, or particle identification. Due to the particularly harsh environmental conditions these experiments are exposed to, it is important to investigate how such conditions affect the performance of the detector, especially timing information. In this work, we tested experimentally the time resolution response of a prototype counter to temperatures ranging from -20 to 20 degrees Celsius. The counter consists of a plastic scintillator bar coupled to an array of four SiPMs cooled by a Peltier module. Electrons from a 90Sr source were used as a beam to measure the detector response, and a differential amplification system was built to reduce noise when reading SiPM signals. Preliminary results show a time resolution near 200 ps at room temperature. An analysis of the time resolution variations at different bias voltage and as a function of temperature is presented.
