Muon tracking system with Silicon Photomultipliers

Abstract We report the characterisation and performance of a low cost muon tracking system consisting of plastic scintillator bars and Silicon Photomultipliers equipped with a customised front-end electronics based on a fast preamplifier network. This system can be used as a detector test bench for astroparticle physics and for educational and outreach purposes. We investigated the device behaviour in self-trigger and coincidence mode, without using LED and pulse generators, showing that with a relatively simple set up a complete characterisation work can be carried out. A high definition oscilloscope, which can easily be found in many university physics or engineering departments, has been used for triggering and data acquisition. Its capabilities have been exploited to discriminate real particles from the background.