Development of scintillation detectors based on avalanche microchannel photodiodes

Avalanche Microchannel PhotoDiodes (AMPDs) are solid state photodetectors with high internal gain and a density of independent channels up to 104/mm2. They are potential substitutes for photomultiplier tubes in a wide variety of applications in nuclear physics and nuclear medicine, especially when fine segmentation of the detectors and their operation in high magnetic fields is required. s work, we study the performance of a detector based on a LYSO (2×2×10 mm3) scintillation crystal and AMPD at detection of 511 keV γ-quanta. The detector shows linear energy response, an energy resolution of ∼12%, and sub-nanosecond time resolution. These characteristics are encouraging for using AMPDs in detector systems of positron emission tomographs (PET) of the next generation.