Characterization of external optical crosstalk reduction for SiPM-based scintillation detectors with an optical bandpass filter

External optical crosstalk remains a significant source of correlated noise in scintillation detectors optically coupled to silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) arrays and can influence achievable performance by limiting the maximum overvoltage at which a detector can be operated. This study evaluated the potential benefits of incorporating an optical bandpass filter, which is absorptive to optical crosstalk and transmissive for scintillation photons, between the scintillator and SiPM array. Several SiPM and bandpass configurations were characterized, including single-element and SiPM arrays with bare, filter-coupled, crystal-coupled, and crystal-filter-coupled interfaces. Coupling the optical filter between a 4 x 4 array of Broadcom AFBR-S4N44P164 M (NUV-MT) SiPMs and a 12 x 12 x 20 mm3 LYSO crystal decreased the total number of detected optical photon noise by up to 92%. The impact of the filter on crosstalk probability reduction was also characterized by the single-channel measurements with the same SiPM, suppressing external crosstalk up to 64%. With the filter coupled, SiPMs were operable at very high overvoltage. The results of these studies demonstrate that optical filtering is a promising technique to significantly reduce correlated noise in scintillation detectors employing SiPMs.