Investigating a novel SiPM read out method for future hodoscope designs

Hodoscopes are a common addition to astroparticle experiments in which reconstruction of an incident particle’s path is required. Traditionally, hodoscope designs were composed of strips of thin ( mm diameter) scintillating fibers woven into bundles and read by photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). As the surface area of PMT faces are much larger than that of the fiber, multiple fibers were traditionally read by a single PMT. This requires careful selection in order not to lose positional precision. Recent development of compact silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) whose surface area is on the order of square millimeters makes it possible to mate a single fiber to a single SiPM without optical weaving. However, this increases the number of electronic channels compared to the traditional method. We investigate the performance of a method by which the signals from multiple of fiber-SiPM pairs are combined electronically, allowing multiple SiPM signals to be read out by a single electronic channel. Here, we show the results of the lab test and simulation studies and discuss the implications for the potential applications.