Radiation Damage Studies Of Sipms At Low Temperatures

We characterized the performance of Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) before and after exposure to 10(12) neutron/cm(2) dosage. Despite the typical orders of magnitude increase of dark current upon neutron irradiation that loss SiPM's photon number resolving capability and deem unusable, we show that the elevated dark current can be suppressed and single-photoelectron detection can be restored by operating it at a lower temperature. The required operating temperature depends on the dosage received. Furthermore, after thermal annealing at high temperature, there is strong evidence that the extrinsic dark current is lowered and the single-photon detection performance are to some extent revived at ambient temperature.