Application of Hamamatsu MPPCs to T2K neutrino detectors

Abstract A special type of Hamamatsu Multi-Pixel Photon Counter (MPPC), with a sensitive area of 1.3 × 1.3 mm 2 containing 667 pixels of size 50 × 50 μ m 2 each, has been developed for the near neutrino detector in the T2K long baseline neutrino experiment. About 60 000 MPPCs will be used in total to read out the plastic scintillator detectors with wavelength shifting fibers. We report on the basic performance of MPPCs produced for T2K.