Characterisation of the Photon Detection System for the LHCb RICH Detector Upgrade

The LHCb Experiment will be upgraded during Long Shutdown II of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2019 and 2020. The goal of the upgrade is to efficiently use the increased instantaneous luminosity in LHC Run 3 and to collect data at the proton collision rate of 40 MHz. The Ring Imaging Cherenkov (RICH) particle identification detectors will be upgraded to perform in the new operating conditions with continuing reliability. The photon detection system will be replaced using multi-anode photomultiplier tubes (MaPMTs) and associated read-out electronics. The photon detection chain was studied at CERN using a pulsed laser to test the system under high event rates and high photon intensities. The behaviour of two types of MaPMTs which are foreseen for the upgrade is presented for varying rates and intensities, and different applied bias voltages. A simulation was created to model the photon detection chain using the Geant4 simulation toolkit. The RICH Upgrade test beam using 180 GeV positive hadrons from CERN SPS in October 2016 was recreated in the simulation. Data from simu- lation and test beam are analysed and compared as a consistency check. Comparing the number of detected photo-electrons in simulation and data allows the photon detection efficiency to be determined.