Beam tests of directly coupled scintillator tiles with MPPC readout

We report on the response to a proton beam of scintillator tiles directly coupled at the face of the tile to multi-pixel photon counters. Detailed measurements with protons show that flat tiles have high response near the photon counters while concave tiles have uniform response suggesting that tiles with this versatile configuration can be tailored to a desired uniformity. The beam response is in qualitative agreement with the response to a non-triggered radioactive source and reveals additional spatial features.