High-throughput gated photon counter with two detection windows programmable down to 70 ps width

Gianluca Boso; Alberto Tosi; Alberto Dalla Mora; Franco Zappa

doi:10.1063/1.4862060

High-throughput gated photon counter with two detection windows programmable down to 70 ps width

Rev Sci Instrum. 2014 Jan;85(1):013107. doi: 10.1063/1.4862060.

Authors

Gianluca Boso¹, Alberto Tosi¹, Alberto Dalla Mora², Franco Zappa¹

Affiliations

¹ Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo Da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy.
² Dipartimento di Fisica, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo Da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy.

PMID: 24517745
DOI: 10.1063/1.4862060

Abstract

We present the design and characterization of a high-throughput gated photon counter able to count electrical pulses occurring within two well-defined and programmable detection windows. We extensively characterized and validated this instrument up to 100 Mcounts/s and with detection window width down to 70 ps. This instrument is suitable for many applications and proves to be a cost-effective and compact alternative to time-correlated single-photon counting equipment, thanks to its easy configurability, user-friendly interface, and fully adjustable settings via a Universal Serial Bus (USB) link to a remote computer.