Improving the performance of ultrafast microchannel-plate photomultipliers in time-correlated photon counting by pulse pre-shaping

Journal Article · Thu Mar 01 04:00:00 EST 1990 · Review of Scientific Instruments; (USA)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1141426· OSTI ID:6857179

Cova, S; Ripamonti, G ^[1]

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1. Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Elettronica Centro di Elettronica Quantistica e Strumentazione Elettronica del CNR, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy (IT)

With ultrafast microchannel-plate (MCP) photomultipliers that produce subnanosecond pulses, the commercially available circuit modules do not provide a correct constant-fraction trigger (CFT) operation. This has a detrimental effect on the resolution obtained in time-correlated photon counting experiments. In order to circumvent this CFT limitation and better exploit the ultrafast MCP performance, a simple pulse-shaping filter has been devised and experimented with. The filter can be interposed between the MCP output and the input of any commercial CFT module, without modifying the latter. The benefit of the filter is confirmed by the experimental results. With MCP samples that produced awkward resolution curves with satellite peaks and other irregular features, the introduction of the filter regularized and narrowed the curve. Also with a setup having fairly good performance, the introduction of the filter was advantageous: the full width at half maximum (FWHM) resolution improved from 75 to 55 ps.

• OSTI ID: 6857179
• Journal Information: Review of Scientific Instruments; (USA), Journal Name: Review of Scientific Instruments; (USA) Vol. 61:3; ISSN RSINA; ISSN 0034-6748
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

440104* -- Radiation Instrumentation-- High Energy Physics Instrumentation
46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
COUNTING CIRCUITS
ELECTRIC FILTERS
ELECTRONIC CIRCUITS
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
FILTERS
MASSLESS PARTICLES
PHOTOMULTIPLIERS
PHOTONS
PHOTOTUBES
PULSE CIRCUITS
PULSE RISE TIME
PULSE SHAPERS
RESOLUTION
SIGNAL CONDITIONERS
TIME RESOLUTION
TIMING PROPERTIES