Speaker
Description
The DarkSide multi-stage program aims to search for WIMPs by building and operating a dual phase liquid Argon (LAr) time projection chamber (TPC). The upcoming DarkSide-20k detector, with a fiducial mass of 20 tonnes of depleted liquid Argon, will operate in the underground laboratories of “Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso”. The photodetection relies on Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). Compared to photomultipliers (PMTs), this new type of detector has higher single-photon resolution and photodetection efficiency, resulting in an increased experiment sensitivity. The DarkSide-20k TPC will be instrumented with 8280 photodetection modules (PDMs). Each of them has an area of about $25\space cm^2$ and consists of a $6X4$ matrix of SiPMs developed in collaboration with FBK. All the SiPMs are read out as a single channel thanks to a custom cryogenic readout electronic system. This talk will focus on the PDM design and the photo-sensor performance in term of dark count rate (DCR), SNR and time resolution. In addition, the signal extraction technique, which is based on analog optical signaling, will be discussed.
