PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION OF ACTIVE QUENCHING-CIRCUITS FOR PICOSECOND TIMING WITH SINGLE-PHOTON AVALANCHE-DIODES

The front-end electronic circuitry plays a fundamental role in determi ning the performance obtained from ultrafast and highly sensitive phot odetectors. In this paper we deal with electronic problems met working with single photon avalanche diodes for detecting single optical phot ons and measuring their arrival time with picosecond resolution. We de scribe an active quenching circuit capable of driving the detector in a remote position, connected with a coaxial cable. By minimizing the n oise of the input stage we succeeded in reducing the contribution of t he detector circuitry to the measured time resolution to less than 10 ps full width at half-maximum. (C) 1995 American Institute of Physics.