Leakage current and capacity variation with temperature in silicon detectors of a space calorimeter

Leakage current and capacity dependence on temperature have been measured in the range − 30°C < t < 20°C for several silicon strip detectors. The experimental setup is composed of a copper test box enclosing 16 current-to-voltage converters and a refrigerator to set and control the required temperatures. These measurements were performed for noise minimization for the space calorimeter of the WiZard experiment to be operated on the American space station Freedom. The results show that the overall noise of the electronic readout chain may be significantly reduced by operating the calorimeter at low temperature

Simulation of low-energy antiproton interactions in a sampling calorimeter

This paper describes the Monte Carlo program used for the simulation of antiproton interactions at intermediate energy inside a brass streamer-tube tracking calorimeter, to be used in a search for antimatter in cosmic rays, in the high atmosphere. The calorimeter is sensitive in the kinetic-energy range 100 - 5000 MeV and the Monte Carlo is tuned in this energy interval both for proton and antiproton interactions. The detector geometry, which consists of a set of plane slabs, may be easily extended to other calorimeter structures