Erlangen 2026 – scientific programme

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 53: Scintillator Detectors II

T 53.8: Talk

Wednesday, March 18, 2026, 18:00–18:15, KH 01.014

Quality control of wavelength-shifting optical modules for the SHiP Surrounding Background Tagger — •Ida Wöstheinrich for the SHiP-SBT collaboration — Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

SHiP (Search for Hidden Particles) is a general-purpose beam dump experiment in preparation at CERN. Its goal is to search for new Feebly Interacting Particles at the GeV-scale in an environment of effectively zero background. The Surrounding Background Tagger (SBT) is a key part of SHiP’s background-suppression system. It detects muons entering SHiP’s helium-filled decay volume from the sides, as well as muon and neutrino inelastic interactions within the volume. The SBT is based on liquid scintillator as the active detector material, read out by Wavelength-shifting Optical Modules (WOMs). An SBT WOM consists of a PMMA tube dip-coated with a dye that absorbs scintillation photons in the range of 280 nm to 400 nm and re-emits photons in the visible spectrum. The re-emitted photons are guided to a circular Silicon photomultiplier array at the end of the WOM tube via total internal reflection inside the tube walls. Approximately 1800 WOMs are required for the SBT, and their performance must be consistent and verifiable. This talk will discuss the development of a dedicated setup for standardised quality control of the SBT WOMs, along with first results. The setup measures the amplitude and homogeneity of the response at different positions on the WOM surface using a pulsed UV LED and photomultipliers in an automated system.

Keywords: SHiP; SBT; Wavelength-shifting optical modules; Liquid Scintillator