Improved electronic readout system for an imaging photon detector

✍ Scribed by James S Milnes; M. Page; M Ingle; J.S. Lapington; J. Howorth

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 115 KB
• Volume: 513
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0168-9002
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nima.2003.08.024

✦ Synopsis

Photek manufacture microchannel-plate based Imaging Photon Detectors, which are able to detect and image single photon events enabling high resolution in both event time and position. We have developed a new system of IPD electronics that has time detection jitter of 1.5 ns and a spread of 4 ns across a pulse height distribution ratio of 10:1. The rise time of the preamplifiers is in the region of 8 ns. The noise in the electronics sets a limit on the position resolution that is smaller than the microchannel-plate pore size, typically 10 mm. We have also included a discrimination system to reject overlapping events and hence greatly reduce image distortion, and the electronics can handle events of nearly 10 6 s À1 . Further improvements include a sine wave driven high voltage unit with a high signal protection system, and a greatly reduced unit size by moving to surface mount technology.