Recording of weak light fluxes by electron counting with photomultipliers

The edge effect in electron multiplier statistics

“…For all reasonable values of the dynode gains, P(n) shows a clear maximum, falling to zero at low pulse amplitudes. In practice, surprisingly good agreement with this simple theory is obtained with several types of photomultipliers (Brault and Gazier 1963a, b, Eberhardt 1964, Evrard and Gazier 1965, Fleishman 1962, Hyman et al 1964, Matheson 1964, Pertsev et al 1963, Pietri 1964, Tusting et al 1962. However, other workers (Baicker 1960, Baldwin and Friedman 1965, Barton et al 1964, Delany and Walton 1964, Prescott 1963, Rome 1964) have reported distributions that show no maximum, but fall monotonically with increasing pulse height.…”