Study of capillary tracking detectors with position-sensitive photomultiplier readout

Abstract

Measurements have been carried out on light yield and attenuation length in glass capillaries filled with new liquid scintillators (LS) and compared with analogous measurements made on 0.5 mm diameter plastic fibres Kuraray SCSF-38 and 3HF. It is found that, at a distance of 1 m, the light output in the capillary filled with green LS based on 1-methylnaphthalene doped with a new dye 3M15 is greater by a factor of 2 to 3 than for plastic fibres. A tracking detector consisting of a capillary bundle read out by a 100 channel position-sensitive microchannel plate photomultiplier (2MCP-100) has been built and tested in the laboratory using a cosmic ray trigger. A comparison has been made between the performance of such a detector and that of a similar one, read out by a 96 channel Philips XP1724/A photomultiplier. It was found that a bundle made of 20 μm diameter capillaries with a tapered end giving a magnification of 2.56, filled with the new IPN+3M15 liquid scintillator, read out by the 2MCP-100, provides a space resolution of σ = 170 μm, a two-track resolution of the same value and a hit density of n = 1.9/mm for tracks crossing the detector at a distance of 20 cm from the photocathode. If the same detector is read out by the Philips XP1724/A, the space resolution becomes 200 μm, the two-track resolution 600 μm and the hit density n = 1.7/mm. The worse performance in the latter case is caused by the larger crosstalk compared with that of the 2MCP-100 PSPM. The results indicate that a LS-filled capillary detector is a very promising device for fast fibre tracking.