Single Photon Timing in the Picosecond Regime

<p dir="ltr">Photon detection is an important part of many fields of physics, engineering and astronomy, including particle and nuclear physics. In all of these applications good spatial and timing resolution is highly desirable. One type of photon detector that is used often when the photon signal is weak is the photomultiplier tube (PMT). A PMT consists of a photocathode, an electron multiplication stage, and a detector. Electron multipliers are used to amplify very small currents, photoelectric currents or secondary currents caused by collisions with high energy particles. One electron multiplication device that can be used is the microchannel plate (MCP). This is a very high gain, fast timing multiplication stage and is used in many PMTs. PMTs and MCPs are often manufactured to specification and optimised for their application. The manufacturing processes of these devices are time-consuming and expensive. It is therefore difficult to test novel structures experimentally, due to the extensive cost and resource demands that would be required to manufacture these structures. These practical restrictions mean that simulating MCPs and PMTs is extremely desirable and would potentially allow the user to design a device and optimise it for a specific application, before entering the manufacturing stage. In this thesis, a simulation of MCPs is discussed, with various gain, spatial distribution, energy distribution and timing characteristics being analysed. The performance of the MCP with various parameter changes is simulated and the results discussed. The complexities of simulating a full PMT structure is discussed and experimental PMT results are gathered with the aim of comparing results to simulation results in the future. The performance of MCPs and PMTs in the presence of an applied magnetic field is simulated and the performance analysed. Finally, some novel structures are simulated and the results compared to the MCP simulations.</p>