Mass production and characterization of 3-inch PMTs for the JUNO experiment

• DOI: 10.1016/j.nima.2021.165347
• Publication Date: 2021-04-16T22:56:43Z
• Authors: Chuanya Cao; Jilei Xu; Miao He; Angel Abusleme; Mathieu Bongrand; Clément Bordereau; Dominique Breton; Anatael Cabrera; Agustin Campeny; Cédric Cerna; Haoqiang Chen; Po-An Chen; Gérard Claverie; Selma Conforti Di...; Christophe De La ...; Frédéric Druillole; Amélie Fournier; Marco Grassi; Xiaofei Gu; Michael Haacke; Yang Han; Patrick Hellmuth; Yuekun Heng; Rafael Herrera; Yee Hsiung; Bei-Zhen Hu; Yongbo Huang; Cédric Huss; Ignacio Jeria; Xiaoping Jing; Cécile Jollet; Victor Lebrin; Frédéric Lefèvre; Hongwei Li; Nan Li; Hongbang Liu; Xiwen Liu; Shuxiang Lu; Bayarto Lubsandor...; Sultim Lubsandorz...; Arslan Lukanov; Jihane Maalmi; Anselmo Meregaglia; Diana Navas-Nicolás; Juan Pedro Ochoa-...; Frédéric Perrot; Rebin Karaparambi...; Abdel Rebii; Bedřich Roskovec; Cayetano Santos; Mariangela Settimo; Andrey Sidorenkov; Igor Tkachev; Giancarlo Troni; Nikita Ushakov; Guillaume Vanroyen; Benoit Viaud; Dmitriy Voronin; Pablo Walker; Chung-Hsiang Wang; Zhimin Wang; Diru Wu; Hangkun Xu; Meihang Xu; Chengfeng Yang; Jie Yang; Frédéric Yermia; Xuantong Zhang
• Keywords: Physics - Instrumentation and Detectors; 115; FOS: Physical sciences; quality: monitoring; fabrication; Atomic; 7. Clean energy; 01 natural sciences; High Energy Physics - Experiment; High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex); Particle and Plasma Physics; 0103 physical sciences; [PHYS.HEXP]Physics [physics]/High Energy Physics - Experiment [hep-ex]; Nuclear; [PHYS.PHYS.PHYS-INS-DET]Physics [physics]/Physics [physics]/Instrumentation and Detectors [physics.ins-det]; physics.ins-det; activity report; JUNO; photomultiplier; hep-ex; Molecular; Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det); Nuclear and Plasma Physics; Nuclear & Particles Physics; Nuclear and plasma physics; Other Physical Sciences; Physical Sciences; Astronomical and Space Sciences; performance

26,000 3-inch photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) have been produced for Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) by the Hainan Zhanchuang Photonics Technology Co., Ltd (HZC) company in China and passed all acceptance tests with only 15 tubes rejected. The mass production began in 2018 and elapsed for about 2 years at a rate of $\sim$1,000~PMTs per month. The characterization of the PMTs was performed in the factory concurrently with production as a joint effort between HZC and JUNO. Fifteen performance parameters were tracked at different sampling rates, and novel working strategies were implemented to improve quality assurance. This constitutes the largest sample of 3-inch PMTs ever produced and studied in detail to date.