Calibration system with optical fibers for calorimeters at future linear collider experiments

We report on several versions of the calibration and monitoring system dedicated to scintillator tile calorimeters built within the CALICE collaboration and intended for future linear collider experiments. Whereas the first, a 1 m3 analogue hadron calorimeter prototype, was already built and tested in beam, second—technological prototype—is currently being developed. Both prototypes are based on scintillating tiles that are individually read out by new photodetectors, silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). Since the SiPM response shows a strong dependence on the temperature and bias voltage and the SiPM saturates due to the limited number of pixels, it needs to be monitored. The monitoring system has to have sufficient flexibility to perform several different tasks. The self-calibration property of the SiPMs can be used for the gain monitoring using a low intensity of the LED light. A routine monitoring of all SiPMs during test beam operations is achieved with a fixed-intensity light pulse. The full SiPM response function is cross-checked by varying the light intensity from zero to the saturation level. We concentrate especially on the last aspect — the high dynamic range.