A study of timing properties of Silicon Photomultipliers

Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) 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.