The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) collaboration
purchased 32 Hamamatsu VUV4 silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) for use
in SBC-LAr10, a bubble chamber containing 10 kg of liquid argon. A
dark-count characterization technique, which avoids the use of a
single-photon source, was used at two temperatures to measure the
VUV4 SiPMs breakdown voltage (VBD), the SiPM gain
(g
SiPM), the rate of change of g
SiPM with
respect to voltage (m), the dark count rate (DCR), and the
probability of a correlated avalanche (PCA) as well as
the temperature coefficients of these parameters. A Peltier-based
chilled vacuum chamber was developed at Queen's University to cool
down the Quads to 233.15 ± 0.2 K and 255.15 ± 0.2 K with
average stability of ±20 mK. An analysis framework was
developed to estimate VBD to tens of mV precision and
DCR close to Poissonian error. The temperature dependence of
VBD was found to be 56 ± 2 mV K-1, and m on
average across all Quads was found to be
(459 ± 3(stat.)±23(sys.))×
103 e- PE-1 V-1. The average DCR temperature
coefficient was estimated to be 0.099 ± 0.008 K-1
corresponding to a reduction factor of 7 for every 20 K drop in
temperature. The average temperature dependence of PCA
was estimated to be 4000 ± 1000 ppm K-1. PCA
estimated from the average across all SiPMs is a better estimator
than the PCA calculated from individual SiPMs, for all
of the other parameters, the opposite is true. All the estimated
parameters were measured to the precision required for SBC-LAr10,
and the Quads will be used in conditions to optimize the
signal-to-noise ratio.