Adaptive compensation method for photomultiplier tube counting temperature drift

Abstract

The photomultiplier tube (PMT) is an important device for micro-light detection, and the detection of light intensity using photon counting method can significantly reduce the interference of noise, but the sensitivity, gain, and dark noise of PMT cathode are easily affected by the ambient temperature, which leads to the instability of the output pulse amplitude and affects the detection performance of the system for micro-light. A high voltage gain compensation and threshold correction system was designed for PMT through microcontroller unit (MCU), digital to analog converter (DAC), and other modules. A hybrid function model of temperature and high voltage compensation increment V_h and threshold compensation increment V_t was constructed by analyzing the cathode saturation current, sensitivity, and dark noise of PMT at different temperatures. And the compensation increment hybrid model was used to compensate the PMT counts output for adaptive temperature drift compensation. Experiments using this method with Hamamatsu’s end-window PMT CR135 demonstrated that this system had a good output signal-to-noise ratio for large temperature variations, with an average count rate improvement of 0.19 at -20 ℃. Even though a small amount of dark noise was introduced, the detection performance was substantially improved.

Keywords

photomultiplier tube (PMT) / adaptive temperature drift compensation / compensated incremental hybrid model / cathode sensitivity

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