Performance of Silicon Photomultipliers in photon number and time resolution

Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) are a novel generation of photon detectors designed as an array of independently operated Geiger-mode APDs (pixels) with common output. SiPM provides proportional detection of low-level light pulses starting from single photons with remarkable photon number and time resolution at room temperature. Now they are worldwide recognized to be competitive with vacuum photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) and avalanche photodiodes (APDs) for scintillation and Cherenkov light detections in such areas as particle physics and nuclear medicine. Well-known specific drawbacks of SiPMs are excess noises caused by stochastic processes of crosstalk and afterpulsing as well as non-linearity and saturation of SiPM response to intense light pulses due to limited number of pixels and noninstant pixel recovery.