In October 2013, the Italian Ministry approved the funding of a Research & Development (R&D) study, within the Progetto Premiale TElescopi CHErenkov made in Italy (TECHE), devoted to the development of a demonstrator for a camera for the Cherenkov Te
lescope Array (CTA) consortium. The demonstrator consists of a sensor plane based on the Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM) technology and on an electronics designed for signal sampling. Preliminary tests on a matrix of sensors produced by the Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK-Trento, Italy) and on electronic prototypes produced by SITAEL S.p.A. will be presented. In particular, we used different designs of the electronics in order to optimize the output signals in terms of tail cancellation. This is crucial for applications where a high background is expected, as for the CTA experiment.
One of the scientific objectives of NASAs Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is the study of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). The Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor (GBM) was designed to detect and localize bursts for the Fermi mission. By means of an array of 12 Na
I(Tl) (8 keV to 1 MeV) and two BGO (0.2 to 40 MeV) scintillation detectors, GBM extends the energy range (20 MeV to > 300 GeV) of Fermis main instrument, the Large Area Telescope, into the traditional range of current GRB databases. The physical detector response of the GBM instrument to GRBs is determined with the help of Monte Carlo simulations, which are supported and verified by on-ground individual detector calibration measurements. We present the principal instrument properties, which have been determined as a function of energy and angle, including the channel-energy relation, the energy resolution, the effective area and the spatial homogeneity.
