Research and Development for the Mu2e Extinction Monitor

Mu2e is a planned experiment to search for flavor-violating conversion from a muon to an electron. The experiment will use a pulsed 8 GeV proton beam to produce muons which will then stop in an aluminum target. Mu2e will search for the μ^- + Al → e^- + Al process. For Mu2e, an extinction rate of 10^-10 is required to reduce the backgrounds to an acceptable level. Extinction is the ratio of the amount of protons striking the production target between beam pulses to the number striking it during the beam pulse. One of the backgrounds, off-target interactions, was simulated using G4beamline and Fermilab's Grid setup to confirm that an extinction rate of 10^-10 is possible. The extinction level will be measured by the extinction monitor which will include scintillation counters read out by photomultiplier tubes. In order to build a beam time profile, low fake responses (after pulses) are needed in the photomultiplier tubes. This thesis determines the best combination of resistors, voltage, and other components that provide the lowest after pulse rate.