High precision, low disturbance calibration of the High Voltage system of the CMS Barrel Electromagnetic Calorimeter

The CMS Electromagnetic Calorimeter is made of scintillating lead tungstate crystals, using avalanche photodiodes (APD) as photo-detectors in the barrel part. The high voltage system, consisting of 1224 channels, biases groups of 50 APD pairs, each at a voltage of about 380 V. The APD gain dependence on the voltage is 3pct/V. A stability of better than 60 mV is needed to have negligible impact on the calorimeter energy resolution. Until 2015 manual calibrations were performed yearly. A new calibration system was deployed recently, which satisfies the requirement of low disturbance and high precision. The system is discussed in detail and first operational experience is presented.