Terrestrial magnetic field effects on large photomultipliers

The effects of the Earthʹs magnetic field on the performance of large PMTs for a cubic-kilometer-scale neutrino telescope has been studied. Measurements were performed for three Hamamatsu PMTs: two 8″ R5912 types; one with a standard and the other with a super bialkali photocathode, and a 10″ R7081 type with a standard bialkali photocathode. The main characteristics of the PMTs, such as detection efficiency, transit time, transit time spread, gain, peak-to-valley ratio, charge resolution and fractions of spurious pulses were measured while varying the PMT orientations with respect to the Earthʹs magnetic field. The measurements were performed both with and without a mu-metal cage magnetic shielding. For the 8″ PMTs the impact of the magnetic field was found to be smaller than for the 10″ PMT. The magnetic shielding strongly reduced the orientation-dependent variations measured for the 10″ PMT and even improved the performance. Although less pronounced, improvements were also measured for the 8″ PMTs.