Proton Irradiation of SiPM arrays for POLAR-2

Abstract

POLAR-2 is a space-borne polarimeter, built to investigate the polarization of Gamma-Ray Bursts and help elucidate their mechanisms. The instrument is targeted for launch in 2024 or 2025 aboard the China Space Station and is being developed by a collaboration between institutes from Switzerland, Germany, Poland and China. The instrument will orbit at altitudes between 340km and 450km with an inclination of 42${}^{\circ }$ and will be subjected to background radiation from cosmic rays and solar events. It is therefore pertinent to better understand the performance of sensitive devices under space-like conditions. In this paper we focus on the radiation damage of the silicon photomultiplier arrays S13361-6075NE-04 and S14161-6050HS-04 from Hamamatsu. The S13361 are irradiated with 58MeV protons at several doses up to 4.96Gy, whereas the newer series S14161 are irradiated at doses of 0.254Gy and 2.31Gy. Their respective performance degradation due to radiation damage are discussed. The equivalent exposure time in space for silicon photomultipliers inside POLAR-2 with a dose of 4.96Gy is 62.9 years (or 1.78 years when disregarding the shielding from the instrument). Primary characteristics of the I-V curves are an increase in the dark current and dark counts, mostly through cross-talk events. Annealing processes at $25^{\circ }C$ were observed but not studied in further detail. Biasing channels while being irradiated have not resulted in any significant impact. Activation analyses showed a dominant contribution of ${\beta }^{+}$ particles around 511keV. These resulted primarily from copper and carbon, mostly with decay times shorter than the orbital period.

accepted for publication in Experimental Astronomy

References in corpus (8)

• Gravitational Waves and Gamma-rays from a Binary Neutron Star Merger: GW170817 and GRB 170817A
• The Supernova -- Gamma-Ray Burst Connection
• Detailed polarization measurements of the prompt emission of five Gamma-Ray Bursts
• The POLAR Gamma-Ray Burst Polarization Catalog
• Background for a gamma-ray satellite on a low-Earth orbit
• Design and construction of the POLAR detector
• Polarimetric Analysis of the Long Duration Gamma Ray Burst GRB 160530A With the Balloon Borne Compton Spectrometer and Imager
• Development and science perspectives of the POLAR-2 instrument: a large scale GRB polarimeter

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Response of the first POLAR-2 Prototype to Polarized Beams
• Performance and radiation damage mitigation strategy for silicon photomultipliers on LEO space missions
• Characterization of more than three years of in-orbit radiation damage of SiPMs on GRBAlpha and VZLUSAT-2 CubeSats
• Proton irradiation of plastic scintillator bars for POLAR-2