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Current goals

Obtain enough setup to measure a pulse from an APD. For example:

Setup

• "test" setup:
  • photon source >> laser attenuator >> APD >> ADC >> Raspberry Pi

• control setup:
  • photon source >> laser attenuator >> "Professional" SPCM >> ADC >> Raspberry Pi

Equipment needed

Semiconductor device:

• May need a semiconductor fabrication facility with the ability to make thin films on Silicon.
• A photodiode or APD to see how it performs.

Analog electronics:

• Circuit design to convert analog signal to digital signal.

Prebuild devices/hardware:

• laser source or photon source
• laser attenuator
• computer/Raspberry Pi for data processing
• Analog to Digital Converter (ADCs)
• "Professional" grade Single Photon Counting Module (SPCM) to characterize experimental setup.
• Fast oscilloscope.

tl;dr wishlist:

• Avalanche Photodiodes (need any 1)

  

  A picture of an APD. SAP series

  • Laser Components SAP500 (passive)
  • Perkin Elmer C30902SH (passive)
  • Perkin Elmer SPCM-AQR-15 (active)
  • MPD PD-050-CTD-FC (active)

• APD testing kit
• Laser source
• Photon attenuator
• Computer/Raspberry Pi for data processing

Potential Problems

• Dark noise may be overwhelming, so we may need to find a way to suppress it. (I suspect this is why commercial devices cost $2k-5k)
• Fabrication cost of the custom semiconductor device may be too high or impractical... gg.com (or we just refurbish an LED/solar panel, this will have lower PDE, but maybe we can use electronics to maximise the PDE.)
• Electronic circuitry costs. (Unlikely to be too costly)