Statistics of photo-multiplier charge and time measurement (original) (raw)
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Abstract
I review the statistics of photomultiplier charge and time measurements
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Applied Optics, 1971
The effect of gain variation on the integrated output-charge distribution of a photomultiplier tube is investigated experimentally and shown to be a predictable function of the multiplier single-electron response. Standardized or nonstandardized pulses recorded using either capacitive or digital storage are considered. Theoretical values for the moment-generating functions and variances (noise powers) of the charge distributions obtained in these four cases are given, and the role of these various distributions in determining the length of time required to achieve a given accuracy in a light-flux measurement is discussed. The experimental measurements adequately confirm the theoretical predictions. The work includes a critical discussion of the field of theoretical and experimental noise investigations in photomultiplier tubes with regard to their relevance in the present state of technology.
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 1993
has been studied with fast light pulses generating yields up to 2 x 10 3 photoelectrons/cm 2 or peak currents of 24 mA. Linearity was obtained with a tapered bleeder chain at a tolerable loss of gain. The serial test of altogether 140 photomultipliers revealed the close correlation between single electron and amplitude resolution. The influence of the photoelectron statistics on this correlation is discussed.
Tests of timing properties of silicon photomultipliers
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 2010
Timing measurements of Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPM) at the picosecond level were performed at Fermilab. The core timing resolution of the electronic measurement technique is approximately 2 picoseconds. The single photoelectron time resolution (SPTR) was measured for the signals coming from the SiPM's. A SPTR of about one hundred picoseconds was obtained for SiPM's illuminated by laser pulses. The dependence of the SPTR on applied bias voltage and on the wavelength of the light was measured. A simple model is proposed to explain the difference in the SPTR for blue and red light. A time of flight system based on the SiPM's, with quartz Cherenkov radiators, was tested in a proton beam at Fermilab. The time resolution obtained is 35 picoseconds per SiPM. Finally, requirements for the SiPM's temperature and bias voltage stability to maintain the time resolution are discussed.
Silicon photomultiplier timing performance study
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in …, 2010
Many characteristics of Silicon Photomultipliers can be tuned with temperature and operation voltage. We present preliminary results of a study of the effect of these two operation parameters on the time resolution of large active area Multi-Pixel Photon ...
Evaluation of the Beijing Instrument Factory GDB-44F photomultipler
1982
Characteristics have been measured for the GDB-44F 2"-diameter photomultiplier. Some typical photomultiplier characteristics-such as gain, dark current, anode output current, transit and rise times as a function of voltage between anode and cathode, and photoelectron pulse-height spectrum, the quan tum-efficiency and the single-electron transit time spread were measured. Des criptions of the measuring systems were also given.
New fast photomultipliers with a screening grid at the anode
IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, 2000
Performances of new fast XP20Y0/DA and XP20Y0Q/DA 8 stage photomultipliers equipped with a screening grid at the anode were studied. The time jitter of the new PMTs was measured using a fast light pulser based on an XP22 light emitting diode. The timing properties in coincidence experiments were measured with BaF 2 , LSO and LaCl 3 :Ce crystals for 60 Co and 22 Na gamma rays and discussed in terms of the measured photoelectron numbers. Particularly, the normalized time resolutions to the number of photoelectrons measured with BaF 2 crystals were comparable to that measured in the past with the XP2020Q in a superior dynode-timing mode. A significant improvement of timing up to a factor of 1.2 due to the grid at the anode was shown also in the measurements with LSO and LaCl 3 :Ce crystals. I. INTRODUCTION t was verified in references [1,2] that a screening grid at the anode in the experimental XP2020UR-M photomultipliers (PMTs) improves time resolution measured with different scintillators (fast plastics and NaI(Tl)) by a factor of 1.14 over the standard XP2020UR PMT. Moreover, the results of the study suggested that for timing with short intense light pulses, such as those of plastic scintillators, a lower number of dynodes would decrease a timing distortion introduced by the space charge effect in PMTs. The idea of the screening grid at the anode of fast PMTs was born in the study of so called dynode timing [3] applied successfully to XP2020, RCA 8850 [3] and other PMTs [4-6]. It was concluded that the commonly used construction of the anode affects measured time resolution. The anode, a grid placed inside the last dynode, see Fig. 1, ensures a low time-of-flight of electrons from the last dynode to the anode and a good charge collection at the anode. However, one can note easily that the anode signal consists of two components: the main one induced by the collected electrons from the last dynode and a parasitic one induced at the anode by electrons traveling towards the anode from the pre-ultimate dynode. This parasitic component is shifted in time relative to the main component, arriving slightly earlier,
Charge reconstruction in large-area photomultipliers
Charge reconstruction in large-area photomultipliers, Journal of Instrumentation, 2018
Large-area PhotoMultiplier Tubes (PMT) allow to efficiently instrument Liquid Scintillator (LS) neutrino detectors, where large target masses are pivotal to compensate for neutrinos' extremely elusive nature. Depending on the detector light yield, several scintillation photons stemming from the same neutrino interaction are likely to hit a single PMT in a few tens/hundreds of nanoseconds, resulting in several photoelectrons (PEs) to pile-up at the PMT anode. In such scenario, the signal generated by each PE is entangled to the others, and an accurate PMT charge reconstruction becomes challenging. This manuscript describes an experimental method able to address the PMT charge reconstruction in the case of large PE pile-up, providing an unbiased charge estimator at the permille level up to 15 detected PEs. The method is based on a signal filtering technique (Wiener filter) which suppresses the noise due to both PMT and readout electronics, and on a Fourier-based deconvolution able to minimize the influence of signal distortions—such as an overshoot. The analysis of simulated PMT waveforms shows that the slope of a linear regression modeling the relation between reconstructed and true charge values improves from 0.769 ± 0.001 (without deconvolution) to 0.989 ± 0.001 (with deconvolution), where unitary slope implies perfect reconstruction. A C++ implementation of the charge reconstruction algorithm is available online at [1].
A technique for estimating the absolute gain of a photomultiplier tube
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment
Detection of low-intensity light relies on the conversion of photons to photoelectrons, which are then multiplied and detected as an electrical signal. To measure the actual intensity of the light, one must know the factor by which the photoelectrons have been multiplied. To obtain this amplification factor, we have developed a procedure for estimating precisely the signal caused by a single photoelectron. The method utilizes the fact that the photoelectrons conform to a Poisson distribution. The average signal produced by a single photoelectron can then be estimated from the number of noise events, without requiring analysis of the distribution of the signal produced by a single photoelectron. The signal produced by one or more photoelectrons can be estimated experimentally without any assumptions. This technique, and an example of the analysis of a signal from a photomultiplier tube, are described in this study.
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Statistics of the Charge Spectrum of Photo-Multipliers and Methods for Absolute Calibration
2019
We derive the full expression for the shape of the charge spectrum that results from the illumination of a photo-multiplier tube. The derivation is for low intensity illumination with constant gain, a common condition for most nuclear and particle physics applications. Under these conditions, it is shown that an analytic expression can be formulated that describes details of the spectrum including the pedestal and dark noise with excellent fidelity to allow statistical fits to data. The derivation and full formula using either Gaussian or Poisson models for gain, and its limiting forms under various simplifying assumptions are presented with strategies on their use. The analytic description can be used to formulate data acquisition strategies to perform precise absolute calibration of photo-multipliers, the digitizers, and the data acquisition system.
Timing properties of Philips XP2020UR photomultiplier
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment
The timing properties of scintillation counters consisting of small NE111 plastic scintillators coupled to the XP202OUR photomultipliers have been studied in comparison to that based on the XP2020. The time jitter of both the photomultipliers, their photoelectron yield for the NE111 plastics and the time resolution with 60 Co and 22 Na sources were measured. A high time resolution was achieved with the XP202OUR equal to 90 ps for 6O Co (at 1 MeV) and 140 ps for 22 Na (at 290 keV) energy settings, about 30% and 20% better respectively than those observed with the XP2020. The large improvement of the time resolution is due to : 30% lower time jitter, about 25% higher photoelectron yield and for the 6°Co energy settings also to a reduced influence of the space charge effect in the XP2020UR. The normalised time resolution to the photoelectron number, measured with 22 Na source, is better by a factor of 1 .14 which corresponds well to the improvement of the time jitter in the new XP202OUR photomultiplier .
Transit Time Uniformity of Two Commercial 5" Photomultiplier Tubes
Bulletin of the American Physical Society, 2014
We investigated the uniformity of electron transit times across the full spatial extent of two 5" photomultiplier tubes, the Hamamatsu R1250 and the Adit B133D01. The photomultiplier tubes were translated across a localized incident light source while a portion of the incident light was simultaneously measured and recorded by a fast photodiode. Constant fraction discrimination was utilized to calculate electron transit times as the difference between the start times of the photodiode and photomultiplier traces. The Hamamatsu tube provided a uniform timing response that varied by no more than 1.7 ns. The Adit tube was extremely non-uniform with transit times that varied by as much as 57 ns, yet the symmetry of variation in transit times differed significantly when analyzed with two different algorithms to determine pulse timing. These results indicate that the Hamamatsu tube is superior to the Adit for experimental timing applications, and that the method of analysis significantly affects final timing results of the Adit tube.
Response of Silicon photo-multipliers to a constant light flux
Nuclear Physics B - Proceedings Supplements, 2009
The response of a Silicon Photomultiplier to a constant illumination has been interpreted in term of Geiger-Mueller avalanche frequency, actually correlated to the photon flux via the photon detection efficiency. The hypothesis has been verified in laboratory tests and applied throughout the development of a device for real-time dosimetry in mammography.
Timing properties of a R1294Z microchannel plate photomultiplier
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, 1983
The timing properties of a scintillation counter consisting of an NEll1 plastic scintillator coupled to a three-stage R1294Z MCP photomultiplier have been studied. The time jitter of the R1294Z photomultiplier, its photoelectron yield for the NElll scintillator and the time resolution for 511 keV annihilation quanta from a 68Ge-rSGa source were measured. This shows that at present the application of MCP photomultipliers in scintillation counters for subnanosecond timing is limited by the low photoelectron yield. A much longer life for the three-stage R1294Z photomultiplier was observed than that of two-stage photomultipliers. An application of the R1294Z photomultiplier for studying light pulse shapes from scintillators by means of the single photon method was tested.
A study of timing properties of Silicon Photomultipliers
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 2012
Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPM) are solid-state pixelated photodetectors. Lately these sensors have been investigated for Time of Flight Positron Emission Tomography (ToF-PET) applications, where very good coincidence time resolution of the order of hundreds of picoseconds imply spatial resolution of the order of cm in the image reconstruction. The very fast rise time typical of the avalanche discharge improves the time resolution, but can be limited by the readout electronics and the technology used to construct the device. In this work the parameters of the equivalent circuit of the device that directly affect the pulse shape, namely the quenching resistance and capacitance and the diode and parasitic capacitances, were calculated. The mean rise time obtained with different preamplifiers was also measured.