SCINTILLATING FIBER TRACKING FOR THE SSC USING VISIBLE-LIGHT PHOTON COUNTERS

Scintillating fiber tracking is being developed for the SSC laboratory as a part of the detector subsystem research and development program. For this research, photons produced in polystyrene based scintillating fibers are detected by visible light photon counters (VLPCs). The VLPCs are silicon impurity band conduction solid state devices [1] with quantum efficiencies near 85%. They provide a fast avalanche gain greater than 10(4) and a count rate capability above 10(7) mm-2 s-1. We report here some of the performance characteristics of these solid state devices and some experimental results obtained using 0.83 mm diameter 3HF + PTP doped polystyrene scintillating fibers. Recent experiments done at UCLA show that an average minimum number of four photons are detected at the end of 4 m of scintillating fiber plus 3 m of clear fiber guide that transmits the photons to the VLPCs.