Upgrade of the scintillator detector for particle tracking in experiments with antiprotons

Abstract

Experiments with antiprotons often require the tracking of charged particles emerging from the annihilation process. The Atomic Spectroscopy And Collisions Using Slow Antiprotons (ASACUSA) collaboration at the CERN Antiproton Decelerator (AD) used several panels of scintillating bars placed around the interaction region to detect the passage of charged pions and determine the annihilation vertex position and time. The panels were composed by extruded scintillating bars and the light was collected using WaveLength Shifting (WLS) fibers and multi-anode PhotoMultiplier Tubes (PMTs). After operating for several years, the fiber-PMT coupling quality had degraded and a major upgrade of the light readout system was planned. The PMTs will be replaced by Silicon PhotoMultipliers (SiPMs) and the front-end electronics changed accordingly. An improvement is expected in the efficiency and the uniformity of the detector response. In this contribution the commissioning of the upgrade will be described, including the results of preliminary tests with cosmic rays.