In this lab, we investigated the responsivity, time response, and noise performance of various photodetectors, including thermal detectors, silicon photodiodes, and photomultiplier tubes (PMT). A standard helium-neon gas laser (HeNe), operated in the red (632.8 nm), was used as the light source for the measurements of the silicon photodiodes. A flashlight served as a radiation source to measure...

The Imaging Calorimeter for ACCESS (Advanced Cosmic-ray Composition Experiment for Space Station) is one of several proposed concepts for the ACCESS calorimeter instrument designed to measure the spectrum of protons, helium and heavier nuclei up to ~10 eV. This design utilizes a carbon target and high atomic number absorber sampled by thin layers of scintillating fibers. An engineering prototyp...

The idea of searching for optical signals from extraterrestrial civilizations has become increasingly popular over the last five years, with dedicated projects at a number of observatories. The method relies on the detection of a brief (∼ few ns), intense light pulse with fast photon detectors. Ground-based gamma-ray telescopes such as the Whipple 10m, providing a large mirror area and equipped...

Scintillation light from gamma ray irradiation in liquid xenon is detected by two Hamamatsu R9288 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) immersed in the liquid. UV light reflector material, PTFE, is used to optimize the light collection efficiency. The detector gives a high light yield of 6 photoelectron per keV (pe/keV), which allows efficient detection of the 122 keV γ-ray line from 57 Co, with a measu...

Photomultiplier tubes and avalanche photodiodes, which are commonly used in quantum optic experiments, are sometimes referred to as threshold detectors because, in photon counting mode, they cannot discriminate the number of photoelectrons initially extracted from the absorber in the detector. We argue that they can be called threshold detectors on more account than that. We point out that thei...

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a large liquid scintillator (LS) detector for neutrino mass ordering and other physics research. uses large-size $20$ inches photomultiplier tubes to detect photons from scintillator. PMTs are sensitive easily affected such that the detection efficiency loses about 60$\%$ under geomagnetic field intensity ($\sim$500 mG). It has significant...