An Interview with Sergey Vinogradov
24 June 2015
Dr. Sergey Vinogradov
Senior Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Dept. of Physics, University of Liverpool and the Cockcroft Institute of Accelerator Science and Technology, UK
Could you give a brief overview of SiPM applications?
The first project on Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM) applications were conducted by MEPhI-Pulsar-ITEP-DESY team in 2003-2005 where a few thousand SiPMs were used as readout of the wavelength-shifting fibre tile calorimeter for the CALICE collaboration. It confirmed the possibility of using SiPM in large scale scientific experiments. A first large industrial-scale project of SiPM implementation was an upgrade of the T2K neutrino detection system in Tokai-to-Kamiokande, Japan. About 60,000 SiPMs were supplied by Hamamatsu and have been successfully tested and assembled by the T2K collaboration since 2006. T2K experiment has been started in 2009, and observation of neutrino oscillations has been reported in 2011. There are a number of accelerator upgrade projects under consideration now, including beam loss monitoring systems for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, future linear colliders and light sources, detector systems of the CMS HCAL, ALICE and NA61/SHINE high energy physics experiments, calorimeter systems at Fermi Lab and Jefferson Lab (USA).
Medical imaging is another very attractive industrial-scale area of SiPM applications. Now, major vendors of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanners, including General Electric, Siemens and Philips, as well as a number of academic-industrial collaborations, e.g. within the EU funded projects “Hyper Image”, Endo TOFPET, the AX-PET collaboration and the OpenPET project were being in a progress of developments and prototyping of SiPM-based systems. These developments are expanding in three directions of image quality improvements exploiting the very good energy and time resolution, pixellation, and insensitivity to magnetic field of SiPMs: 1) Time-of-flight PET for full-body clinical scanners, 2) high resolution PET required for small animal imaging in pre-clinical studies, and 3) combined PET/MRI (magnetic resonance imaging).
Astroparticle physicists benefit from SiPM technology since 2005, when MEPhI-Pulsar SiPMs have been sent in space for cosmic ray studies at the International Space Station. In a framework of APPEC (former ASPERΑ), SiPM were being considered as a promising photon detector for MAGIC, EUSO, DARWIN, GERDA, LAGUNA LENA, and CTA projects. In particular, many R&D teams, members of CTA collaboration, are working hard on prototyping of SiPM-based CTA cameras, and one of the most remarkable result of this activity – FACT (First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope in La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain) based on Hamamatsu MPPCs – are operational and stable since 2011. The key advantage of SiPM technology for CTA applications is high sensitivity to and resolution of a few photon short pulse of a Cherenkov flash, unaffected by an intense night sky background light, because time-separated single counts of the background photons can be easily discriminated from multi-photon events. Photon number resolution facilitates self-calibration of SiPM gain, negative feedback allows to overcome over-lighting turning to normal operations in a few tens nanoseconds, power consumption is rather low, operations are stable … what else would be needed for reliable and efficient work in the field for a long term?
What was your personal implication with this research? What can be expected from SiPMs in the future?
Since 1982, I am with the Solid State Photodetectors group of the Lebedev Physical Institute, Moscow, from where SiPM concepts have been originated. Initially I was in R&D of photosensors for image recording and processing, and then refocused on avalanche detectors in the early 2000s, when my colleagues established collaboration on R&D of SSPM between the Lebedev Institute and the Amplification Technologies, USA. In 2013 I won the 7th European Framework Program Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship grant “SiPM in-depth” and started to work at the host institution – the QUASAR group of the University of Liverpool and the Cockcroft Institute of Accelerator Science and Technology, UK.
The QUASAR (Quantum Systems and advanced Accelerator Research) group led by Prof. Dr. C.P. Welsch is an internationally structured research group focused on the development and optimization of particle accelerators and their diagnostic systems, in particular, on Beam Loss Monitoring (BLM) for the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) based on Cherenkov fibre with SiPM readout. From my point of view, BLM is the most challenging application of SiPM technology, because it requires detection of extremely variable in intensities and temporal profiles Cherenkov light flashes and then identification of locations of the losses alongside a CLIC beam line from SiPM response. If we are successful in resolving this challenge, accelerator technology would obtain huge benefits from high accuracy, fast response, and low cost of SiPM-based BLM systems. Moreover, it will pave the way to use SiPMs for super-sensitive high dynamic range detection of arbitrary waveform signals, which could dramatically extend application areas of SiPM technology in optical communications, laser ranging, X-ray computer tomography, homeland security, and many others.
Therefore, in the next few years, we plan to advance experimental studies of SiPMs into transient and nonlinear processes at high light intensities, to make a comparative characterization of SiPMs from major developers, and to start experiments at the CLIC test beam line facility (CTF3) in CERN. Theoretical studies and modelling of SiPMs are an inherent part of my work as well. I will try to describe non-stationary nonlinear history-dependent photon detection in SiPMs by a filtered point process technique from the theory of stochastic processes, and I am looking for collaboration for that with professional mathematicians.
After the end of my Marie Curie Fellowship, I will return to the Lebedev Institute in September 2015 to transfer my new knowledge and collaborations with UK and EU accelerator physicists to my home institution. Obviously, being in Moscow I plan to continue ongoing projects within the QUASAR group in UK and in CERN, as well as, to take part and apply my experience in new projects and collaborations in EU and worldwide.
Dr. Shubin (Lebedev Physical Institute) identified SiPM technology as a revolution in photon detection equal to an invention of lasers. And Dr. Mirzoyan (Max Plank Institute) called his talk “SiPM: on the Way of Becoming an Ideal Low Light Level Sensor” (IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference, Knoxville, USA, 2010). In fact, since the 2000s we see very fast and significant progress of SiPM in all technical aspects, in applications and commercialization, as well as an almost exponential growth of the number of SiPM-related papers and conference talks. The most remarkable evidence of that progress for me is the world’s first SiPM-based time-of-flight capable, integrated, simultaneous PET/MR tomography scanner New SIGNA™ presented by General Electric in August 2014, because about 10 years ago they started to learn SiPM technology with samples from Amplification Technologies and with my technical support.
I will present a detailed technical analysis of what we can expect from SiPMs in the future in my talk “SiPM performance: key factors and trade-offs, possible improvements and limitations” at the APPEC Technology Forum, in Munich on April 22-23. I have no doubt that we have a lot of space for improvements in the SiPM design, performance, and functionality which will make it possible for SiPMs to solve the problems that at present seem unsolvable and may contribute to making the world a better place in the future.
- V. E. Shubin, D. A. Shushakov, Avalanche Photodetectors, ch. 11 in Encyclopedia of Optical Engineering, Marcel Dekker, Ink, pp. 121–141 (2003)
- I.M. Zheleznykh, Z.Ya. Sadygov, B.A. Khrenov, L.G. Tkachev, F. Zerrouk, Novel Micro-pixel Avalanche Photo Diodes and their Possible Application in Cosmic Ray / Astrophysical Researches, in Proceedings of the 30th International Cosmic Ray Conference, Vol. 5 (HE part 2), pp. 1589–1592, Mexico City, Mexico, 2008
- B. Dolgoshein, V. Balagura, P. Buzhan, M. Danilov, L. Filatov, et al., Status report on silicon photomultiplier development and its applications, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment vol. 563 (2) p. 368-376 (2006)
- V. Saveliev, Silicon Photomultipliers – New Era of Photon Detection, ch. 14 in Advances in Optical and Photonic Devices, InTech, pp. 249–272 (2010)
Dr. Sergey Vinogradov is a Senior Marie Curie Research Fellow at the QUASAR group, Department of Physics, University of Liverpool and the Cockcroft Institute of Accelerator Science and Technology, UK, since 2013; Senior Research Scientist at the Solid State Physics Department of the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1992; Senior Member of SPIE – International Society for Optical Engineering; member of IEEE – Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineers. He received a MS in Physics (1981) from Moscow State University and a PhD in Solid State Physics (1992) from the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute, Moscow, Russia. Dr. Vinogradov is an expert in R&D of solid state photodetectors including Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPM), methodology of measurements and characterization of photon detectors at a low light level down to single photons, probabilistic modelling of SiPM response and overall performance. His recent activity is focused on application of SiPM technology in high energy physics, accelerators, astrophysics and medical imaging. He is author of several patents and numerous publications in these areas as well as reviewer, session chair at international conferences and workshops on SiPM physics and applications, and organizer of the Brainstorming Workshop on SiPM time performance (Corsica, May 2015).
Submitted by Eleni Chatzichristou
APPEC Communications Officer