Low Temperature Performance of a Large Area Avalanche Photodiode
  A Large Area Avalanche Photodiode (LAAPD) was studied, aiming to access its performance as light detector at low temperatures, down to -80 C. The excess noise factor, F, was measured and found to be approximately independent of the temperature. A linear dependence of F on the APD gain with a slope of 0.00239 +/- 0.00008 was observed for gains above 100. The detection of low intensity light pulses, producing only a few primary electron-hole pairs in the photodiode, is reported. 
V.N. Solovov, F. Neves, V. Chepel, M.I. Lopes, R.F. Marques and   A.J.P.L. Policarpo