A SiPM photon-counting readout system for Ultra-Fast Astronomy

• Published in: The Astrophysical journal Vol. 5; no. 1
• Main Authors: Lau, Albert Wai Kit, Chan, Yan Yan, Shafiee, Mehdi, Smoot, George F., Grossan, Bruce
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Astronomical Society 2022; Maynooth Academic Publishing
• Subjects: Instrumentation and Detectors; Physics
• ISSN: 2565-6120; 0004-637X; 2565-6120; 1538-4357
• DOI: 10.21105/astro.2108.07526

Very little work has been done searching for astrophysical transient optical emission in the millisecond to nanosecond regime with significant sensitivity. We call this regime "Ultra-Fast Astronomy", or UFA. To investigate transients on as short time scales as possible, we developed our own customized readout system for a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM)-based UFA camera, intended for use on conventional astronomical telescopes. SiPMs, available in array packages for imaging a field, are capable of time-tagged single-photon detection in the visible wavelength range. Our readout system consists of 16 channels of 14-bit data logging. Each channel includes a 50-dB gain pre-amplifier, signal shaping circuits, an analogue front end, an analogue to digital converter, and a Xilinx UltraScale+ Field Programable Gate Array Multipurpose System on Chip (FPGA-MPSoC)board for data-logging. We show that our system successfully read out the data from SiPM at 16 ns intervals with a maximum power consumption of 300 mW per channel and capability to perform concurrent 16 channels readout.