Large-Area Picosecond Photodetectors Push Timing Envelope

As described in the journal Review of Scientific Instruments, which is produced by the AIP Publishing, a team of researchers within the LAPPD collaboration developed an advanced facility for testing large area photodetectors — with a level of spatial precision measured in micrometers and time resolutions at or below a picosecond.

“Innovation in science often comes from advances in instrumentation,” said Matthew Wetstein, a Grainger Fellow at the University of Chicago's Enrico Fermi Institute who was a co-author on the study. “It can come in the form of a completely new capability or be as simple as making existing instrumentation affordable and accessible for many different types of experiments.

In many areas of particle physics, detectors have seen steady improvements in resolution, but timing is an envelope that deserved a push, he added.

“We’re designing detectors that are the fastest ever built for their spatial granularity, size, and cost,” Wetstein said. “Our goal is to put a very powerful tool into the hands of the scientific community.”

A central aspect of the project is a technique known as Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), the authors reported in their paper. Beyond the realm of high-energy physics, potential applications for the photodetector range from basic X-ray physics to medical imaging to large-area X-ray detection for homeland security.

The article, “A Test Facility for Large-Area Microchannel Plate Detector Assemblies Using a Pulsed Sub-picosecond Laser” by Bernhard Adams, Matthieu Chollet, Andrey Elagin, Eric Oberla, Alexander Vostrikov, Matthew Wetstein, Razib Obaid, and Preston Webster is published in the journal Review of Scientific Instruments. See: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4810018

The authors of this study are affiliated with Argonne National Laboratory, SLAC, the University of Chicago, the Illinois Institute of Technology and Arizona State University.

ABOUT THE JOURNAL
Presenting innovation in instrumentation and methods across disciplines http://rsi.aip.org/

Media Contact

Jason Socrates Bardi Newswise

More Information:

http://www.aip.org

All latest news from the category: Physics and Astronomy

This area deals with the fundamental laws and building blocks of nature and how they interact, the properties and the behavior of matter, and research into space and time and their structures.

innovations-report provides in-depth reports and articles on subjects such as astrophysics, laser technologies, nuclear, quantum, particle and solid-state physics, nanotechnologies, planetary research and findings (Mars, Venus) and developments related to the Hubble Telescope.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Lighting up the future

New multidisciplinary research from the University of St Andrews could lead to more efficient televisions, computer screens and lighting. Researchers at the Organic Semiconductor Centre in the School of Physics and…

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Partners & Sponsors