Design and performance of a high-speed and low-noise preamplifier for SiPM

Considering the R&D for upgrading the K L 0 and μ detectors in the Belle II experiment using a scintillator and silicon photomultiplier (SiPM), we designed a compact high-speed and low-noise preamplifier. The preamplifier demonstrated a good gain stability, bandwidth of 426 MHz , baseline noise level of σ ≈ 0.6 mV , dynamic range of up to 170 mV of the input signal amplitude, good time resolution of 20 ps , and it can be comprehensively applied to SiPMs. Adopting pole-zero-cancelation in the preamplifier reduces both the rise and fall times of the SiPM signal, which can significantly improve the time resolution and reduce the pile-up when using a large SiPM or an array of SiPMs. Various combinations of the preamplifier and several types of SiPMs demonstrated time resolutions better than 50 ps for most cases; when the number of detected photons was larger than 60, a time resolution of approximately 25 ps was achieved.