Silicon Photomultipliers for Orbital Ultra High Energy Cosmic Ray Observation

Understand

Development of the Silicon photomultiplier Elementary Cell Add-on camera (SiECA) has provided extensive information regarding the use of SiPMs for future cosmic ray detection systems.

• We present the technical aspects of sensor readout development utilizing Citiroc ASIC chips from Weeroc controlled by a Xilinx FPGA to process and package events from four 64 channel Hamamatsu MPPC S13361 arrays generating 128 frame events with an integration time of 2.5ms (parameters are based on JEM-EUSO geometry but can be easily adjusted).
• With single photon counting capability, SiECA proves SiPM are viable sensors to replace Multi-Anode PhotoMultiplier Tubes in future devices, especially when high luminosity exposure is possible potentially damaging MAPMT based systems.
• Complementary to the technical aspects, computational and analysis methods for sensor array characterization and in depth device flat-fielding are presented.