Charge Calibration of the ANTARES high energy neutrino telescope

Abstract

ANTARES is a deep-sea, large volume Mediterranean neutrino telescope installed off the Coast of Toulon, France. It is taking data in its complete configuration since May 2008 with nearly 900 photomultipliers installed on 12 lines. It is today the largest high energy neutrino telescope of the northern hemisphere. The charge calibration and threshold tuning of the photomultipliers and their associated front-end electronics is of primary importance. It indeed enables to translate signal amplitudes into number of photo-electrons which is the relevant information for track and energy reconstruction. It has therefore a strong impact on physics analysis. We will present the performances of the front-end chip, so-called ARS, including the waveform mode of acquisition. The in-laboratory as well as regularly performed in situ calibrations will be presented together with related studies like the time evolution of the gain of photomultipliers