Talk:Visible Light Photon Counter

Notability - interest
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)

List of References
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.

-- Louis Knee (talk) 14:44, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Original (wide-band) SSPM: Petroff87
 * Optimised for visible: Petroff89a
 * Test with fibre: Petroff89b
 * First public use of term "VLPC"?: Abbot91
 * Device and fiber characterisation and initial VLPC development: Atac92a
 * Prototype tracker system: Atac92b
 * D0 Como talk from 1994 (referred to by Sgrue above): DZero94a (slides) and DZero94b (proceedings)
 * Progress reports: Atac95 and Atac96 - Atac95 is readily available compared to Atac96.
 * D0: DZero95
 * VLPCs for D0 upgrade: Bross02
 * Entire D0 upgrade overview: DZero06
 * MICE usage: MICE11
 * CHORUS fibre tracker - compare VLPCs with SiPMs (effectively a secondary source): Chorus10 and Chorus11
 * Quantum infoscience: McKay11
 * 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)

Article Title
As VLPC refers to a specific type of device, I think "Visible Light Photon Counter" is a proper noun and like Shaun the Sheep should be capitalised. And certainly it's not hyphenated. I've tried undoing the page moves of 26 October 2011 and 6 March 2009‎, but don't seem to be able to (I'm not a registered user, by choice!). If someone else can rename this article, please do! --87.113.195.208 (talk) 14:09, 14 May 2020 (UTC)


 * I've tried doing the move to "Visible Light Photon Counter" but can't, presumably as latter is already a redirect. Putting in a request on Wikipedia:Requested_moves/Technical_requests Louis Knee (talk) 14:00, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * The move to Visible Light Photon Counter has been done, and I've checked that Visible-light photon counter, Visible light photon counter and VLPC all re-direct here correctly. (When I regain paywall access post-Covid, I hope to add some content too!) Louis Knee (talk) 14:52, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
 * The article should be moved back to the sentence-case title. It is a type of device, and not a proper noun. People tend to habitually capitalize phrases that form acronyms, but there is no good reason to do this, and standard practice on Wikipedia is to put the article titles in sentence case. In particular, the paper by Abbot et al. that is cited to support the name of these devices refers to them as "visible light photon counters". --Srleffler (talk) 04:29, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't presently have my box of papers handy or any paywall access so as to go through them systematically, but that's plain not true - my PDF of Abbot91 clearly has the phrase capitalised (Intro, para 1 line 9). So do VoR PDFs of Bross02 and MICE11. I have at least skimmed a bunch of literature on this (see ref. list above), and it's usually capitalised and certainly not hyphenated (aside from the re-naming incident on this site). What do you mean by "type of device"? VLPCs are a specific technology; PMTs or SiPMs even if tuned for the visible band would be out of scope.
 * Note that Petroff89a cites a patent that I've not yet chased up, but that could imply that SSPM at least was a proprietary device distributed under that name. Louis Knee (talk) 00:22, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I understand that this is a specific technology, but that does not necessarily make it a proper noun. Unless it's being used as a brand name for a product sold by a particular manufacturer we should put it in sentence case, even if the literature capitalizes it. I'll take your word for it that Abbot91 has it capitalized—the online abstract (link above) does not.--Srleffler (talk) 04:56, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
 * "Unless it's being used as a brand name..." I don't have a problem with that hypothesis, but it's going to be very difficult to resolve the brand-name issue after all this time, unless someone finds something in an old issue of Photonics Spectra or similar. Be wary with old references: Abbot91 was likely CRC from the authors and doesn't include an abstract: I've no idea what the provenance of your abstract on the website is and how reliable any OCR/copyediting is, but I would point out that the very phrase that you pounced on is actually given as "visible light phonon counter", so I'd hardly trust the capitalization there!--Louis Knee (talk) 16:32, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
 * To put it another way: changing the article titles causes extra difficulties with links etc., so I don't believe it's worth it here. As I see it, the three major issues around this article are 1) no explanation of impurity band conduction (whether here or elsewhere on Wikipedia), 2) history and use needs expanding with secondary sources (I'm making - admittedly glacially slow - progress here), and 3) lack of info about the quantum crypto side.--Louis Knee (talk) 15:03, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Significance
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)


 * 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)

Are the infrared photon counters used in infrared astronomy the same technology
Are the infrared photon counters used in infrared astronomy (on Spitzer Space Telescope and JWST) the same technology (both seem to use impurity band conduction) ? If so, could they be called "optical photon counters" ? Can they count UV photons ? - Rod57 (talk) 12:25, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Some very definitely not; some of the Spitzer ones look as though they might be derivatives of the SSPM but I've never managed to follow the trail of references back far enough. In any event, those are infra-red devices and this article is about sensors for the visible. It's not even obvious (from reading the present articles) whether the space telescopes actually count photons at all, so it might be better to start by improving the descriptions of the telescope instruments before worrying about the sensor technologies. Louis Knee (talk) 22:50, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
 * OK so you want this article to be just about derivatives of SSPM ? What should the more general article be called ?
 * (I'll delve into the telescope article refs when I get time) - I'm hoping we can have a impurity band conduction photon counter one day - after we have a better impurity band conduction than the description here (which is the best place to redirect it I've found so far in wikipedia, hence the intentional temporary circularity that someone reverted). - Rod57 (talk) 16:47, 28 December 2021 (UTC)


 * This article is already just about VLPCs. If you can find good references to significant or notable uses of such beyond the visible range, then it could be changed to a "derivatives of SSPM" article. I still have no idea what "more general article" you are talking about. A usable description of impurity band physics is needed on Wikipedia, but this article is the wrong place to host it - this (VLPC) is a niche application of that wider concept within semiconductor physics. Louis Knee (talk) 22:43, 29 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Yes, I reverted the circular wikilink as 1) this page currently doesn't have any sort of explanation of impurity band conduction, and 2) a circular link that fails to provide the expected explanatory content will only confuse readers and has no place in the live encyclopedia. Louis Knee (talk) 22:43, 29 December 2021 (UTC)


 * JWST seem a bit coy about the detector technologies: see e.g. https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/innovations/infrared.html Louis Knee (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 23:06, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

General or specific - split or clarify
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)


 * 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)


 * And, what's wrong with Photon counting? Louis Knee (talk) 22:16, 29 December 2021 (UTC)