Talk:Visible Light Photon Counter

message: Hey, it seems there is at least one other person (outside of Dzero) that is interested in VLPCs! I think that means it meets the minimum criterion for having its own Wikipedia page :-)
Since there is very little info about the VLPC itself right now in the article, I'm going to link to my old Como talk. I guess one could also put the text inline. You'd think that Rockwell or Boeing or LSRL would have a page on VLPCs; if you find one, link it. Sgrue 23:21, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notability - interest 

message: I'm pasting my complete list of references in here, just to avoid losing them in the edit history. Many are quite old and some readers may have paywall issues, so there are more than strictly needed to provide alternatives. 
* Original (wide-band) SSPM: Petroff87M.D. Petroff, M.G. Stapelbroek and W.A. Kleinhans: "Detection of Individual 0.4–28 μm Wavelength Photons via Impurity‐Impact Ionization in a Solid‐State Photomultiplier" Applied Physics Letters 51(6) pp.406-408  (1987)
* Optimised for visible: Petroff89aM.D. Petroff and M.G. Stapelbroek: "Photon-Counting Solid-State Photomultiplier" IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science 36(1) pp.158-162. .  (1989)
* Test with fibre: Petroff89bM.D. Petroff and M. Atac: "High Energy Particle Tracking Using Scintillating Fibers and Solid State Photomultipliers" IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science 36(1) pp.163-164.   (1989)
* First public use of term "VLPC"?: Abbot91B. Abbot et al.: "Studies of Visible Light Photon Counters with Fast Preamplifiers" Conference Record of the 1991 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference, Santa Fe, NM, USA, pp.369-373   (1991)
* Device and fiber characterisation and initial VLPC development: Atac92aM. Atac et al.: “Scintillating Fiber Tracking for the SSC Using Visible Light Photon Counters” Nuclear Instruments and Methods A314 pp.56–62   (1992)
* Prototype tracker system: Atac92bM. Atac et al.: “Tracking with Scintillating Fibers and Visible Light Photon Counters” Nuclear Instruments and Methods A320 pp.155–160   (1992)
* D0 Como talk from 1994 (referred to by Sgrue above): DZero94a (slides) and DZero94bD0 Collaboration: "First Large Sample Study of Visible Light Photon Counters (VLPC's)" in "4th International Conference on Advanced Technology and Particle Physics", Como, Italy, 3rd-7th October 1994. Nucl.Phys.B Proc.Suppl. 44 pp.340-348  (1995) (proceedings)
* Progress reports: Atac95M. Atac, "Scintillating Fiber Tracking at High Luminosities Using Visible Light Photon Counter Readout" in Four Seas Conference on High Energy Physics, Trieste, Italy, 25 June 1995. Available as technical report FERMILAB-Conf-95/350 (1995) and Atac96M. Atac: "Scintillating Fiber Tracking at High Luminosities using Visible Light Photon Counter Readout" pp.149-160 in Imaging Detectors In High Energy, Astroparticle And Medical Physics - Proceedings Of The UCLA International Conference, J. Park (ed.), World Scientific Publishing   (1996) - Atac95 is readily available compared to Atac96.
* D0: DZero95D. Adams et al.: "Performance of a Large Scale Scintillating Fiber Tracker Using VLPC Readout" IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science 42(4) pp.401-406   (1995)
* VLPCs for D0 upgrade: Bross02A. Bross et al., “Characterization and Performance of Visible Light Photon Counters (VLPCs) for the Upgraded DØ Detector at the Fermilab Tevatron,” Nuclear Instruments and Methods A477 pp.172–178   (2002)
* Entire D0 upgrade overview: DZero06D0 Collaboration: “The Upgraded D0 Detector” Nuclear Instruments and Methods A565 pp.463–537   (2006)
* MICE usage: MICE11M. Ellis et al., “The Design, Construction and Performance of the MICE Scintillating Fibre Trackers,” Nuclear Instruments and Methods A659 pp.136–153   (2011)
* CHORUS fibre tracker - compare VLPCs with SiPMs (effectively a secondary source): Chorus10 and Chorus11
* Quantum infoscience: McKay11K. McKay "Development of the Visible Light Photon Counter for Applications in Quantum Information Science" Dissertation, Duke University, http://hdl.handle.net/10161/4990 (2011)
* IR Astronomy: 
** AKARI paper, Raytheon array sensors: Mouri11
** MIRI paper, the intro covers Si:As sensor development: Gaspar20
* Atac95, Atac96 and Bross02 have short historical summaries.
* Bross02 is the most accessible technical description.
* I've not followed up the quantum info/crypto side.
* M. Atac is Muzaffer Atac
* The Rockwell patent is M.D. Petroff, M.G. Stapelbroek, and W.A. Kleinhans: U.S. Patent No. 4 586 068 (29 April 1986). Still got to find the Raytheon one again...
* Another potential review/secondary source: Donati14 (but as yet I've not got paywall access)
-- Louis Knee (talk) 14:44, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of References

message: Not quite sure what to do about the 'notability' comment at the top of the page. Why would the article itself need to include 
'information on the notability of the subject matter'? I can see that it should be notable, as in 'contain notable information',
but that's not the same as 'information on notability'. Does whoever put that there mean the article should convince a disinterested reader that he/she should care?? Anyways, I think it's a good idea to have articles on obscure scientific devices in an encyclopedia. Cf. the 'differential geometry' discussion at the end of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability/Arguments . I'd like to see that comment removed. - s.g.
Sgrue 20:18, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think "obscure" is a helpful word; but rather "niche": the majority of physicists will never encounter VLPCs either as devices or in text, but those that do find the abbreviation used as-is in the title of a journal paper (e.g. see the references) can reasonably expect to look them up here. Having said that, a full-length write-up from first principles (what's a semiconductor) is overkill: all that's needed is brief guidance on how VLPCs differ from other types of device. I've tried to put together the skeleton (with references) of such a summary: intro, history, technical info, applications; which I believe satisfies the requirements for both "notability" and "this is a stub"... (this article being at the Croughton end of the Croughton-London scale). I'm NOT a detector physicist though, so my assessment of what's significant in the the technical paragraph and the reader's background knowledge is likely poor. - 87.113.195.208 (talk) 13:38, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Significance 

message: This article is confused about whether it describes a specific proprietary device, or a general class of devices. The name has flipped between VLPC, Visible Light Photon Counter, Visible-light photon counter, and back to Visible Light Photon Counter. It seems to me we should have optical photon counter (to include similar infra-red sensors, as in Spitzer and JWST), perhaps Visible-light photon counter (if that is what people call them), and Visible Light Photon Counter standalone or as a section in Visible-light photon counter. VLPC could redirect to Visible-light photon counter with a hatnote to Visible Light Photon Counter if that is separate ? - Rod57 (talk) 16:34, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: No, this article (concisely) describes a specific sensor type (VLPC, possibly proprietary but that would need a reference), and has done so since it was created ~15 years ago. I can't see what you mean by "general class of devices". The name changes are not significant and are explained under Article Title above. Yes, the article could do with a bit more explanation: I've pulled together a list of references but not so far had the time to access, read, understand and update. Louis Knee (talk) 22:01, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

text: And, what's wrong with Photon counting? Louis Knee (talk) 22:16, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  General or specific - split or clarify