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Description
The Advanced Particle Astrophysics Telescope (APT) is a proposed space-based gamma-ray observatory for the MeV–TeV range. To validate its detector technologies, the Antarctic Demonstrator for APT (ADAPT) is being developed for a balloon flight during the 2026–2027 Antarctic summer. Its core consists of an Imaging CsI Calorimeter (ICC) and a four-layer scintillating fiber tracker (Hodoscope).
The ICC is built from 3x3 arrays of CsI(Na) tiles, each coupled to orthogonal WLS fiber planes read out by SiPMs, enabling fine x–y energy reconstruction. An innovative feature of ADAPT is the addition of edge-mounted SiPM arrays, which collect escaping scintillation photons and enhance both light yield and localization. The Hodoscope complements the ICC with four crossed fiber layers providing precise trajectory information.
Both detectors rely on a large number of optical channels, with each fiber individually coupled to SiPMs. To meet the compactness and low-power constraints of a space application, a multiplexing scheme is adopted together with the 16-channel SMART (SiPM Multichannel ASIC for high Resolution Cherenkov Telescopes) ASIC for SiPM readout. Edge-detector information compensates for multiplexing-induced ambiguities, preserving reconstruction accuracy.
This contribution presents the design and performance characterization of the multichannel SiPM readout for ADAPT, marking one of the first implementations of a highly segmented SiPM-based tracker–calorimeter system for space astrophysics.
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