Afterpulse measurement for 8-inch candidate PMTs for LHAASO

An afterpulse occurs within a short time after the main pulse and cannot be directly distinguished from the true physical signals. In cosmic ray experiments, a large number of photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) are used, which means the occurrence of afterpulses leads to a significant background. Therefore, before PMTs are employed, their afterpulse characteristics need to be evaluated to make sure they perform as expected. To evaluate the impact of afterpulses, we investigate the afterpulses for the Hamamatsu PMT R5912 (a candidate of the WCDA and MD for LHAASO) using two different electronic testing systems. First, we measured the characteristics of afterpulses in detail using a frequency-tunable flash analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with a time window of up to 15 μ s after a laser signal. We measured the time delay with respect to the main pulse, the amplitude, and the rate of the afterpulse dependence, on the main signal amplitude and the applied high voltage. Second, we developed a system that uses a multi-hit time-to-digital converter (multi-hit TDC), which allows for much faster measurement of the afterpulse rates, in order to make it possible to test up to 5000 large-sized PMTs.