On the evaluation of silicon photomultipliers for use as photosensors in liquid xenon detectors

Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are potential solid-state alternatives to traditional photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) for single-photon detection. In this paper, we report on evaluating SensL MicroFC-10035-SMT SiPMs for their suitability as PMT alternatives. We successfully operated these devices in a liquid-xenon detector, which demonstrates that SiPMs can be used in noble element time projection chambers as photosensors. The devices were also cooled down to 170K to observe dark count dependence on temperature. No dependencies on the direction of an applied 3.2 kV/cm electric field were observed with respect to dark-count rate, gain, or photon detection efficiency.