Accurate measurements of the rise and decay times of fast scintillators with solid state photon counters

In this work we present a measurement setup for the determination of scintillation pulse shapes of fast scintillators. It is based on a time-correlated single photon counting approach that utilizes correlation between 511 keV annihilation photons to produce start and stop signals in two, separate crystals. The measurement is potentially cost effective and simple to set up while maintaining an excellent timing resolution of 120 ps. Apart from these advantages this method probes the entire volume of the crystal under investigation rather than a thin layer at the surface. Here, we present a proof-of-concept and first results for the time constants of LYSO.