AMIGA at the Auger Observatory: the scintillator module testing system

Abstract

AMIGA is an extension of the Pierre Auger Observatory that will consist of 85 detector pairs each one composed of a surface water-Cherenkov detector and a buried muon counter. Each muon counter has an area of 30 m2 and is made of scintillator strips with doped optical fibers glued to them, which guide the light to 64 pixels photomultiplier tubes. The detector pairs are arranged at 433 m and 750 m array spacings. In this paper we present the testing and initial calibration system for the scintillator modules that constitute each muon counter of AMIGA. The scintillator modules are tested with a "scanner" that consists of an x−y positioning system that moves a 5 mCi 137Cs radioactive source over the module taking data at fixed locations. The scanner both tests the module for possible fabrication defects and stores the light-attenuation curve parameters. A complete scanning process of a 64 strip scintillator module has been performed and results are presented. Also, attenuation curves obtained with scanner and with background muons are compared with satisfactory results.