The Investigation of Radiation Detectors with Silicon Photomultiplier Readout

The purpose of this study is to determine how efficiently we can build radiation detectors with silicon photomultiplier readout. We will build the detectors by reading out plastic scintillator with silicon photomultipliers via a number of different coupling methods, and compare the efficiencies of our different coupling methods to that of preexisting detectors. Specifically, we will compare our detector performance to that of plastic scintillator detectors with photomultiplier tube readout, which is a widely used setup in high energy physics experiments. Ultimately, we would like to determine whether or not we may simplify the design and construction of large scale detectors by utilizing silicon photomultipliers and simple coupling methods