Front End Amplifiers for Simultaneous Dual Readout of SiPM Sensors

Abstract

In this work, we present two fully open Analog Front End (AFE) designs for the simultaneous readout of the standard and fast outputs of ONSemi MicroFC-10035 Silicon Photomultipliers and report their main figure-of-merit parameters. The standard output AFE has a 1 p.e. amplitude of $(394 \pm 1)$ mV, which results in a Signal-to-Noise ratio of 30 dB. In addition, the fast AFE has a rise time of $(1.3\pm 0.1)$ ns and a median electronic jitter of $34^{+7}_{-5}$ ps, resulting in an excellent timing performance. Using these amplifiers for simultaneous dual readout, we demonstrate a proof-of-concept application, in which fast output timing information is used to suppress correlated noise events or pileup events present in the standard output charge measurements. This suppression results in a reduction of non-prompt correlated noise (delayed crosstalks and afterpulses) in dark conditions and an increase up to $\sim$14 in single photon discrimination under a continuous incident photon rate of 7.8 MHz/mm$^2$. These results show that dual SiPM readout provides a practical way to remove correlated noise or pileup contamination in standard output charge measurements on an event-by-event basis.