Optimizing Silicon photomultipliers for Quantum Optics

Photon Detection with Silicon Photomultipliers

The Silicon Photomultiplier (SPM) addresses the challenge of detecting, timing and quantifying low-light signals down to the single-photon level. Traditionally the province of the Photomultiplier Tube (PMT), Avalanche Photodiode (APD), or PIN photodiode with high-gain amplifier, the Silicon Photomultiplier now offers a highly attractive alternative that closely mimics the low light detection ca...

Silicon Photomultipliers: Characterization and Applications

Modeling crosstalk in silicon photomultipliers

Optical crosstalk seriously limits the photon-counting resolution of silicon photomultipliers. In this work, realistic analytical models to describe the crosstalk effects on the response of these photodetectors are presented and compared with experimental data. The proposed models are based on the hypothesis that each pixel of the array has a finite number of available neighboring pixels to exc...

Measurements of Cherenkov Photons with Silicon Photomultipliers

A novel photon detector, the Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM), has been tested in proximity focusing Ring Imaging Cherenkov (RICH) counters that were exposed to cosmic-ray particles in Ljubljana, and a 2 GeV electron beam at the KEK research facility. This type of RICH detector is a candidate for the particle identification detector upgrade of the BELLE detector at the KEK B-factory, for which th...

Time estimation with multichannel digital silicon photomultipliers.

Accuracy in timemark estimation is crucial for time-of-flight positron emission tomography, in order to ensure high quality images after reconstruction. Since the introduction of multichannel digital silicon photomultipliers, it is possible to acquire several photoelectron timestamps for each individual gamma event. We study several timemark estimators based on multiple photoelectron timestamps...