Characterization of three high efficiency and blue sensitive silicon photomultipliers

We report about the optical and electrical characterization of three high efficiency and blue sensitive Silicon photomultipliers from FBK, Hamamatsu, and SensL. Key features of the tested devices when operated at 90% breakdown probability are peak photon detection efficiencies between 40% and 55%, temperature dependencies of gain and PDE that are less than 1%/degrees C, dark rates of similar to 50 kHz/mm(2) at room temperature, afterpulsing of about 2%, and direct optical crosstalk between 6% and 20%. The characteristics of all three devices impressively demonstrate how the Silicon-photomultiplier technology has improved over the past ten years. It is further demonstrated how the voltage and temperature characteristics of a number of quantities can be parameterized on the basis of physical models. The models provide a deeper understanding of the device characteristics over a wide bias and temperature range. They also serve as examples how producers could provide the characteristics of their SiPMs to users. A standardized parameterization of SiPMs would enable users to find the optimal SiPM for their application and the operating point of SiPMs without having to perform measurements thus significantly reducing design and development cycles.