Design and Performance of the Prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope Camera
Creators: name: Adams, Colin B.
name: Ambrosi, Giovanni
name: Ambrosio, Michelangelo
name: Aramo, Carla
name: Arlen, Timothy
name: Benbow, Wystan
name: Bertucci, Bruna
name: Bissaldi, Elisabetta
name: Biteau, Jonathan
name: Bitossi, Massimiliano
name: Boiano, Alfonso
name: Bonavolontà, Carmela
name: Bose, Richard
name: Bouvier, Aurelien
name: Buscemi, Mario
name: Brill, Aryeh
name: Brown, Anthony M.
name: Buckley, James H.
name: Canestrari, Rodolfo
name: Capasso, Massimo
name: Caprai, Mirco
name: Coppi, Paolo
name: Covault, Corbin E.
name: Depaoli, Davide
name: Di Venere, Leonardo
name: Errando, Manel
name: Fegan, Stephen
name: Feng, Qi
name: Fiandrini, Emanuele
name: Furniss, Amy
name: Garczarczyk, Markus
name: Gent, Alasdair
name: Giglietto, Nicola
name: Giordano, Francesco
name: Giro, Enrico
name: Halliday, Robert
name: Hervet, Olivier
name: Hughes, Gareth
name: Incardona, Simone
name: Humensky, Thomas B.
name: Ionica, Maria
name: Jin, Weidong
name: Johnson, Caitlin A.
name: Kieda, David
name: Krennrich, Frank
name: Kuznetsov, Andrey
name: Lapington, Jon
name: Licciulli, Francesco
name: Loporchio, Serena
name: Marsella, Giovanni
name: Masone, Vincenzo
name: Meagher, Kevin
name: Meures, Thomas
name: Mode, Brent A. W.
name: Mognet, Samuel A. I.
name: Mukherjee, Reshmi
name: Okumura, Akira
name: Pantaleo, Francesca R.
name: Paoletti, Riccardo
name: Di Pierro, Federico
name: Ribeiro, Deivid
name: Riitano, Luca
name: Roache, Emmet
name: Ross, Duncan
name: Rousselle, Julien
name: Rugliancich, Andrea
name: Santander, Marcos
name: Schneider, Michael
name: Schoorlemmer, Harm
name: Shang, Ruo-Yu
name: Stevenson, Brandon
name: Stiaccini, Leonardo
name: Tajima, Hiroyasu
name: Taylor, Leslie P.
name: Thornhill, Julian
name: Tosti, Luca
name: Tripodo, Giovanni
name: Vagelli, Valerio
name: Valentino, Massimo
name: Vandenbroucke, Justin
name: Vassiliev, Vladimir V.
name: Wakely, Scott P.
name: Watson, Jason J.
name: White, Richard
name: Wilcox, Patrick
name: Williams, David A.
name: Wood, Matthew
name: Yu, Peter
name: Zink, Adrian
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
subject: Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (pSCT) is a candidate for a medium-sized telescope in the Cherenkov Telescope Array. The pSCT is based on a novel dual mirror optics design which reduces the plate scale and allows for the use of silicon photomultipliers as photodetectors. The prototype pSCT camera currently has only the central sector instrumented with 25 camera modules (1600 pixels), providing a 2.68$^{\circ}$ field of view (FoV). The camera electronics are based on custom TARGET (TeV array readout with GSa/s sampling and event trigger) application specific integrated circuits. Field programmable gate arrays sample incoming signals at a gigasample per second. A single backplane provides camera-wide triggers. An upgrade of the pSCT camera is in progress, which will fully populate the focal plane. This will increase the number of pixels to 11,328, the number of backplanes to 9, and the FoV to 8.04$^{\circ}$. Here we give a detailed description of the pSCT camera, including the basic concept, mechanical design, detectors, electronics, current status and first light.