Gain Stabilization of SiPMs with an Adaptive Power Supply

The gain of silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) increases with bias voltage and decreases with temperature. To operate SiPMs at stable gain, the bias voltage can be readjusted to compensate for temperature changes. We have tested this concept with 30 SiPMs from three manufacturers (Hamamatsu, KETEK and CPTA) operating in a climate chamber at CERN by varying temperatures between 1 degree C and 48 degrees C. We built an adaptive power supply that uses a linear dependence of the bias voltage on temperature. We stabilized four SiPMs simultaneously with only one compensation parameter for the readjustment of the bias voltage of four SiPMs. For all tested Hamamatsu and CPTA SiPMs we achieved our goal of limiting gain changes to less than +-0.5% in the 20 - 30 degrees C temperature range.