Future use of silicon photomultipliers for Kaos at MAMI and P¯ANDA at FAIR

A characterization of scintillating fibres with silicon photomultiplier read-out was performed in view of their possible application in fibre tracking detector systems. Such a concept is being considered for the Kaos spectrometer at the Mainz Microtron MAMI and as a time-of-flight start detector for the hypernuclear physics programme at the P¯ANDA experiment of the FAIR project. Results on particle detection efficiency and time resolution are discussed. In summary, the silicon devices are very suitable for the detection of the low light yield from scintillating fibres insofar a trigger scheme is found to cope with the noise rate characteristics.