A New Fast Silicon Photomultiplier Photometer

TL;DR

This paper presents a low-cost, high-performance silicon photomultiplier-based photometer capable of sub-millisecond sampling, demonstrated through successful observation of the Crab Pulsar's light curve.

Contribution

Development of a fast, affordable optical photometer using commercial SiPM modules and custom electronics for astronomical observations.

Findings

Successful observation of the Crab Pulsar with the prototype

Derived pulsar period, power spectrum, and light curve shape

Results agree with previous measurements

Abstract

The realization of low-cost instruments with high technical performance is a goal which deserves some efforts in an epoch of fast technological developments: indeed such instruments can be easily reproduced and therefore allow to open new research programs in several Observatories. We realized a fast optical photometer based on the SiPM technology, using commercially available modules. Using low-cost components we have developed a custom electronic chain to extract the signal produced by a commercial MPPC module produced by Hamamatsu, in order to obtain sub millisecond sampling of the light curve of astronomical sources, typically pulsars. In the early February 2011 we observed the Crab Pulsar at the Cassini telescope with our prototype photometer, deriving its period, power spectrum and shape of its light curve in very good agreement with the results obtained in the past with other instruments.