Princeton Instruments PI-MAX4, Manual

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118 PI-MAX
®
4 System Manual Issue 9
6.5.2 Single Shot Experiment
A single shot experiment offers only one chance to capture an event. As with any gated
experiment, the time budget of the experiment is critical. If there is no pre-trigger from the
experiment, a photodiode can be used to generate an electrical trigger from the laser light. In
this situation, light has to be delayed by optical means (e.g., fiber-optic cable or mirror
reflections,) to allow sufficient time for the electronics to be activated after having received
the trigger. Another important thing to note in single shot experiments is that
Sensor
Cleaning
is configured for
Clean Until Trigger
so that there is no dark charge accumulation
while it waits for the trigger.
This experiment is an attempt to capture a 60 ns fluorescence generated by a single shot
laser. The time budget of the experiment is detailed in
Table 6-2 . This information is
important in order to choose the correct length fiber optic cable.
In this experiment, cable lengths are kept to a minimum so that the length of the fiber optic
cable required may also be minimized.
Figure 6-20 provides a block diagram of the hardware setup for a single shot experiment.
Figure 6-20: Block Diagram: Single Shot Experiment
Table 6-2: Single Shot Experiment Time Budget
Delay Source
Delay
(ns)
Total Delay
(ns)
Fiber Optic Cable
Length
Photodiode (light -> TTL pulse) 2 30 A minimum of 21 ft of
fiber optic cable is
required.
Photodiode -> PI-MAX4 (2 ft BNC cable) 3
PI-MAX4 25
PI-MAX4
Photodiode
Laser
Trigger In
Fiber Optic Cable
Beam Splitter
GigE
90-264
4411
-013
9_00
64