Evaluation of the ID220 single photon avalanche diode for extended spectral range of photon time-of-flight spectroscopy

This paper describe the performance of the ID220 single photon avalanche diode for single photon counting, and investigates its performance for photon time-of-flight (PToF) spectroscopy. At first this report will serve as a summary to the group for PToF spectroscopy at the Department of Physics, Lund University (Sweden) together with ID Quantique Inc. (Geneve, Switzerland). As such, the report does not give an introduction to PToF spectroscopy, which may be found om the Doctoral on the topic [2, 18, 1]. The report focuses on a description of the detectors ability to measure the PToF distribution of infrared light.

First, a motivation for using the ID220 for measuring PToF distribution is given, followed by a brief description of the experimental setup in which the detector was characterized. Following this, the quantification of delay using cross correlation between PToF distributions is described. This allows the changes in delay and shape to be characterized. A technique for reducing measurement artefacts by lowering the repetition rate of the light source is also investigated. Lastly, the applicability of the detector for PTOF spectroscopy is discussed and conclusions drawn about its suitability for this application.