Time Controller Series User Manual
Section 6: Operating the Time Controller Software
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6.3.4
Timestamp Data
With the Time Controller Series, users have the option to record the arrival time of every individual
detection event incident on an input channel
, referred to as ‘timestamps’
, rather than the
aggregated data of count rates or histogram time bins, for up to four input channels.
Timestamp data acquisition is again defined
in pairs of reference (‘start’) and input (‘stop’) channels,
where timestamps for up to four channel pairs can be collected simultaneously. Note that
histograms can be collected in parallel to these timestamp acquisitions. The user selects these
channels as described in Section 6.3.1
Channel selection, and ensures
the ‘Save’ checkbox
(and
optionally the ‘include start index’ checkbox)
is selected in the Timestamps tab of the Save options
view (see Figure 20).
Note
:
Timestamps are only recorded if the ‘Save’ checkbox is selected in the
Timestamps tab of the Save options view (see Figure 20), and reference indices
will only be recorded if the ‘include start index’ checkbox is additionally selected.
Figure 21: Diagram of timestamp acquisition for a single reference/
’
start
’
(green) and input/
’
stop
’
(red) channel pair. Here,
a
‘
timestamp
’
is recorded as the time difference between an observed input channel pulse (solid red curve) and the most
recent reference channel pulse (solid green curve), when and only when a pulse is observed on the input channel.
Meanwhile, the Time Controller is also counting how many pulses have occurred on the reference channel, recorded
alongside each timestamp as the
‘
reference index
’
.