Silicon photomultipliers characterization for the EMR prototype of the MICE experiment.

The SiPMs are excellent candidates for the replacement of PMTs in many experimental situations. In this article we describe the performances of different types of SiPMs from Hamamatsu and FBK-IRST before and after irradiation with photons and neutrons in terms of signal to noise ratio, time resolution and efficiency. The SiPMs are connected to a scintillation tracker/calorimeter, composed of eight layers (4x and 4y) of 10 scintillating bars each and have been tested at the CERN PS T9 beamline. The tracker/calorimeter is a small-size prototype of a bigger detector called EMR (Electron Muon Ranger), a particle identification system developed for the MICE experiment.