Evaluation of novel PMTs of worldwide best parameters for the CTA project

Photomultiplier Tubes (PMT) are the most widespread detectors for measuring fast and faint light signals. About six years ago, we started an improvement program for the PMT candidates for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CIA) project in cooperation with the companies Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. (Japan) and Electron Tubes Enterprises Ltd. (England). CTA is the next major Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes array for ground-based high energy gamma-ray astrophysics. A total of similar to 100 telescopes of sizes of 23 m, 12 m and 4 m in diameter will be built in northern and southern hemispheres. For CTA we need PMTs with the highest quantum efficiency and photoelectron collection efficiency, short pulse width of a few ns, low transit time spread and very low afterpulsing. The manufacturers were able to produce 1.5' PMTs of enhanced peak quantum efficiency of similar to 40 %. These collect up to 95-98% of photoelectrons onto the first dynode for the wavelengths >= 400 nm. A pulse width of <= 3 ns has been achieved at the selected operational gain of 40k. The afterpulsing for a threshold of >= 4 photoelectrons is dramatically reduced, down to the level of 0.02%. We will report on the measurements of 1.5' PMTs from Hamamatsu and Electron Tubes Enterprises as candidate PMTs for the CTA project. The novel 1.5' PMTs have the worldwide best parameters. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V.