Characterization of HZC XP1805 photomultiplier tube for LHAASO-WCDA with a high dynamic range base

The Water Cherenkov Detector Array (WCDA) for the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) will employ 3000 large-sized hemisphere photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) to collect the Cherenkov light produced by shower particles crossing water. The PMTs require not only good single photoelectron (SPE) resolution and small transit time spread (TTS), but also good linearity up to 4000 photoelectrons. XP1805 PMT produced by Hainan Zhanchuang Photonics Technology Co., Ltd (HZC), China, with a production line imported from Photonis (France) is a good candidate for LHAASO-WCDA readout. In this paper, the design of a high dynamic range base for XP1805 is presented. The SPE responses and non-linearity of XP1805 with the high dynamic range base are measured. These results show that HZC XP1805 with the designed base is well qualified for LHAASO-WCDA, with peak-to-valley ratio greater than 2, TTS around 3 ns, dynamic range (non-linearity within 5%) over 1500 and 5300 photoelectrons for anode and the 6th dynode output, respectively, at PMT gain of 3 x 10(6) with the inciting light pulse width of 6.4 ns.