Ageing studies of wavelength shifter fibers for the TILECAL/ATLAS experiment

Natural and accelerated ageing studies for the different components of the TILECAL calorimeter, of the ATLAS experiment, play a central role in forecasting the evolution of the detectorʹs performance throughout its operating life. It is possible that the operation of ATLAS will be extended by 5 years in an upgraded LHC scenario. Such prospect makes these studies even more important, in order to assess the contribution of the natural ageing in relation to the other processes inducing performance loss in the optical components. Among other activities in this LHC/CERN collaboration, the Lisbon calorimetry group is involved in studying the impact of radiation damage and natural ageing in optical characteristics of the TILECAL wavelength shifter (WLS) optical fibers and scintillators, and to reevaluate the light budget of the tile/fiber system. The light yield and the attenuation length of the WLS and scintillating optical fibers are measured using an X–Y table. Results are presented for several sets of WLS optical fibers (Kuraray Y11(200)MSJ) whose characteristics have been monitored since 1999. Most of those 338 fibers are from the mass production for the TILECAL detector: 208 non-aluminized 200 cm fibers, from several production batches, and 128 batch #6 aluminized fibers, with lengths ranging from 114 to 207 cm.