Development of scintillation detectors based on avalanche microchannel photodiodes

Avalanche Microchannel PhotoDiodes (AMPDs) are solid state photodetectors with high internal gain and a density of independent channels up to 10(4)/mm(2). They are potential substitutes for photomultiplier tubes in a wide variety of applications in nuclear physics and nuclear medicine, especially when fine segmentation of the detectors and their operation in high magnetic fields is required. In this work, we study the performance of a detector based on a LYSO (2 x 2 x 10 mm(3)) scintillation crystal and AMPD at detection of 511 keV gamma-quanta. The detector shows linear energy response, an energy resolution of similar to 12%, and sub-nanosecond time resolution. These characteristics are encouraging for using AMPDs in detector systems of positron emission tomographs (PET) of the next generation. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.