Design of an Efficient, High-Throughput Photomultiplier Tube Testing Facility for the IceCube Upgrade

• Published in: Proceedings of 37th International Cosmic Ray Conference — PoS(ICRC2021)
• Main Authors: Abbasi, R., Botner, Olga, Burgman, Alexander, Glaser, Christian, Hallgren, Allan, O'Sullivan, Erin, Pérez de los Heros, Carlos, Sharma, Ankur, Valtonen-Mattila, Nora, Zhang, Z.
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Högenergifysik 2022
• Subjects: Accelerator Physics and Instrumentation; Acceleratorfysik och instrumentering; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-518496; https://doi.org/10.22323/1.395.1056

The IceCube Upgrade is an extension of the IceCube detector at the geographic South Pole. It consists of seven new strings with novel instrumentation. More than 430 multi-PMT optical modules called "mDOMs", housing 24 3-inch PMTs each, will be produced for the Upgrade. This will require testing and pre-calibration on a short timescale of more than 10,000 PMTs prior to assembly and deployment. We present the design of a PMT testing facility that enables simultaneous testing of roughly 100 PMTs per day at temperatures down to -20 degrees C. The design is implemented at RWTH Aachen University and TU Dortmund University in parallel to achieve a throughput of up to 1,000 PMTs per week. This will enable a steady supply of tested PMTs to the production sites, which is critical for the Upgrade, as well as the future IceCube-Gen2 project. For complete list of authors see http://dx.doi.org/10.22323/1.395.1056