Improving the light collection efficiency of silicon photomultipliers through the use of metalenses

Abstract

Metalenses are optical devices that implement nanostructures as phase shifters to focus incident light. Their compactness and simple fabrication make them a potential cost-effective solution for increasing light collection efficiency in particle detectors with limited photosensitive area coverage. Here we report on the characterization and performance of metalenses in increasing the light collection efficiency of silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) of various sizes using an LED of 630~nm, and find a six to seven-fold increase in signal for a $1.3\times 1.3{\mathrm{mm}}^2$ SiPM when coupled with a 10-mm-diameter metalens manufactured using deep ultraviolet stepper lithography. Such improvements could be valuable for future generations of particle detectors, particularly those employed in rare-event searches such as dark matter and neutrinoless double beta decay.

arXiv comment13 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Aberration-free ultra-thin flat lenses and axicons at telecom wavelengths based on plasmonic metasurfaces
• High efficiency dielectric metasurfaces at visible wavelengths
• Sensitivity and discovery potential of the proposed nEXO experiment to neutrinoless double beta decay
• The Next White (NEW) detector
• Design and construction of a new detector to measure ultra-low radioactive-isotope contamination of argon