Discovery of Sub-Poissonian Statistics of Light Photons in Scintillators That Did Not Take Place

Abstract

When considering X-ray radiation registration by a scintillation detector, A. Bousselham et al. (Photoelectron Anticorrelations and Sub-Poisson Statistics in Scintillation Detectors), introduced two Fano factors (the Fano factor for scintillation photons and the Fano factor for photoelectrons). They stated their experimental data provided direct evidence for sub-Poissonian statistics for light photons in scintillators. An accurate mathematical description of the processes in the X-rays registration by a scintillation detector allows one to obtain the correct formulas for the mean value, the output signal variance of photodetectors, and the formula for the covariance between the signals of photodetectors. An analysis of these formulas allows one to conclude that a scintillation detector should be characterized by only one Fano factor, which determines the fluctuations of the electron–hole pair generation process in the scintillator. Since the Fano factor for electron–hole pairs in scintillators is on the order of 0.1, this fact explains the results obtained in the article. Thus, the discovery of sub-Poissonian statistics for light photons in scintillators did not take place.