Development of a SiPM Camera for a Schwarzschild-Couder Cherenkov Telescope for the Cherenkov Telescope Array

A. N. Otte; J. Biteau; H. Dickinson; S. Funk; T. Jogler; C. A. Johnson; P. Karn; K. Meagher; H. Naoya; T. Nguyen; A. Okumura; M. Santander; L. Sapozhnikov; A. Stier; H. Tajima; L. Tibaldo; J. Vandenbroucke; S. Wakely; A. Weinstein; D. A. Williams

arXiv · 1509.02345

Development of a SiPM Camera for a Schwarzschild-Couder Cherenkov Telescope for the Cherenkov Telescope Array

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Abstract

We present the development of a novel 11328 pixel silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) camera for use with a ground-based Cherenkov telescope with Schwarzschild-Couder optics as a possible medium-sized telescope for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). The finely pixelated camera samples air-shower images with more than twice the optical resolution of cameras that are used in current Cherenkov telescopes. Advantages of the higher resolution will be a better event reconstruction yielding improved background suppression and angular resolution of the reconstructed gamma-ray events, which is crucial in morphology studies of, for example, Galactic particle accelerators and the search for gamma-ray halos around extragalactic sources. Packing such a large number of pixels into an area of only half a square meter and having a fast readout directly attached to the back of the sensors is a challenging task. For the prototype camera development, SiPMs from Hamamatsu with through silicon via (TSV) technology are used. We give a status report of the camera design and highlight a number of technological advancements that made this development possible.

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A. N. Otte, J. Biteau, H. Dickinson, S. Funk, T. Jogler, C. A. Johnson, P. Karn, K. Meagher, H. Naoya, T. Nguyen, A. Okumura, M. Santander, L. Sapozhnikov, A. Stier, H. Tajima, L. Tibaldo, J. Vandenbroucke, S. Wakely, A. Weinstein, D. A. Williams. 2015-09-08. Development of a SiPM Camera for a Schwarzschild-Couder Cherenkov Telescope for the Cherenkov Telescope Array. https://arxiv.org/abs/1509.02345

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