Silicon Photomultipliers in High Energy and Space Applications

In recent years Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) have been proposed as a new type of readout system for scintillating detectors in many experiments. SiPMs consist of a matrix of parallel-connected silicon micro-pixels, which are independent photon counters working in limited Geiger mode with very high gain. The goal of this thesis work is to describe the use of SiPMs as a readout system for plastic scintillators, both for tracking and calorimetry purposes. Different prototypes of scintillating bar tracker and shashlik calorimeters have been tested at CERN on the PS and SPS extracted beamlines. All the tests have been performed in the framework of the FACTOR (Fiber Apparatus for Calorimetry and Tracking with Optoelectronic Read-out) collaboration, a three year R&D project started in 2007 and funded by the Italian Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN).