A laboratory course on detector readout for undergraduate students of experimental physics

Abstract The laboratory course program presented in this paper (96 h in total) aims to give undergraduate students of experimental physics the necessary knowledge to build and manage a complete experimental setup for the readout of a particle detector. Students learn to understand and operate silicon photosensors (SiPMs) in single photon regime; to amplify and shape their analogue signals with feedbacked operational amplifiers; to digitise and trigger them with a microcontroller; and to transmit waveforms via UART on a PC running MATLAB, where they can build typical ‘comb-like’ SiPM spectra that allow to discern single photoelectrons.