Thomas Huber Karlsruhe

SiPMs for the space-based fluorescence telescope JEM-EUSO(pdf)

To increase the amount of detected ultra-high energy cosmic rays JEM-EUSO (Extreme Universe Space Observatory on board the Japanese Experiment Module) is under development. To realize this space-based fluorescence telescope several pathfinders like TA-EUSO (Telescope-Array), Mini-EUSO, SPB-EUSO (Super Pressure Balloon) are on their way. A new option for a focal surface are SiPMs (Sillicon Photomultiplier). These detectors are compared to classic photomultiplier tubes similar in detection efficiency. Beside these SiPMs have additional advantages like a more compact structure and a bias voltage which is not in the range of high voltage. The newest generation of these detectors, TSV-SiPMs (Through-Sllicon Via), reduce drastically the dead space between two channels. Arrays of these promising TSV-SiPMs appointed as focal surface are under investigation at KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) and a prototype of a TSV-SiPM-based EC (Elementary Cell) for JEM-EUSO is under development.