Preparatory study of photomultiplier tubes of 10-inch and 3-inch diameter for KM3NeT underwater neutrino telescope

Abstract

Large area photomultipliers are widely used in neutrino and astro-particle detectors to measure Cherenkov light in media like water or ice. The key element of these detectors are the so-called module, which consists of a photodetector enclosed in a transparent pressure-resistant container to protect it and ensure good light transmission. KM3NeT collaboration aims to construct an underwater hybrid neutrino telescope by using two models detection unit. The tower detection unit will be composed of large area 10-inch photomultipliers tube enclosed into 13-inch glass vessel sphere. In the string detection unit instead, the light detector will be the digital optical module (DOM) a glass vessel of 17-inch with 31 photomultipliers of 3-inch diameter looking upwards and downwards. The choice of two different kinds of photomultipliers, obliges us to investigate their main characteristics. Noise pulses at the anode of each photomultiplier strongly affect the performance of the detector. A large study was conducted on noise pulses of large area photomultipliers, considering time and charge distributions of dark pulses, pre-pulses, delayed pulses, and afterpulses. The contribution to noise pulses due to the presence of the external glass vessels was also studied. Moreover the presence of the Earth's magnetic field should modify quantities like gain and transit time spread in photomultipliers and we will deeply investigate on this.