Sensors capable of detecting single photons are of critical importance for a very wide range of scientific and technical applications in such areas as medical imaging, biotechnology, high energy physics, scientific instrumentation, communication, and homeland security, including, in particular, positron emission tomography, flow cytometry, Cherenkov cosmic ray telescopy, laser ranging, optical time domain reflectometry or beam loss monitoring in particle accelerators and light sources.
Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs), in particular, are an emerging and very promising technology due to their photon number resolution at room temperature, insensitivity to magnetic fields, compactness and relatively low operating voltages. Furthermore, they are cheap to mass-produce, especially in comparison to conventional photomultiplier tubes. In order to evaluate their potential for a specific application, it is necessary to quantify their fundamental parameters as a particle detector, as well as in combination with scintillators or optical fibers used for signal generation and transport, in detail.
In the frame of a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship (IIF) Dr. Sergey Vinogradov from the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Russia will join the QUASAR Group in the Cockcroft Institute from summer 2013. Prof. Welsch, one of the Institute’s Associate Directors and PI on this grant: “I am absolutely delighted that such an outstanding researcher will be joining us. SiPMs are a very interesting technology which we have been using for example for developing beam loss monitors. However, their characteristics still need to be better understood before we will be able to fully exploit their potential and Dr. Vinogradov’s work will contribute to an improvement of our current understanding.”
The EU will provide more than 300k of funding for this study which aims at developing a comprehensive analytical probabilistic model of SiPM response that will take the specific excess noises of crosstalk and after pulsing, nonlinearities and saturation effects into account. Based on this model, a full set of analysis, measurement and characterization methods will then be built up. This will allow for selecting an optimum SiPM design and model for a specific application as accelerator, nuclear or medical physics instrumentation and thus contribute to an overall improvement of the respective application.
Prof. Welsch: “The project addresses a very important research area. It will allow us to closely collaborate with a number of academic and industry partners and is also ideally linked to our R&D activities within the DITANET, oPAC and LA3NETprojects.”
The SiPM in-depth project is funded by the European Union under Grant Agreement Number 329100.
Marie Curie Incoming International Fellowships are individual fellowships that aim to attract top-class researchers from third countries to work and undertake research training in Europe with a view to developing mutually-beneficial research co-operation. Proposals from all areas of scientific and technological research of interest to the European Community are accepted and there are no pre-defined priority areas. Grants are awarded through a highly competitive process.