Designed a photomultiplier tube X-ray framing camera based on pulse dilation technology

Abstract

During the past decade, many diagnostic instruments have been developed that utilize electronic pulse dilation to achieve temporal resolution in the sub-10 ps range. The motivation behind these development efforts was the need for advanced diagnostics in high-density physics experiments around the world. This technology converts the signal of interest into a free electron cloud, which is accelerated into a vacuum drift space. The acceleration potential varies over time and causes axial velocity dispersion in the electron cloud. This velocity dispersion is converted into time separation after electrons pass through drift space. Then, traditional time resolved methods were used to detect free electrons, and the effective temporal resolution was magnified many times. A gated microchannel plate (MCP) X-ray framing camera based on pulse-dilation technology has been designed and manufactured in the paper. Here, we discuss design details and applications of these instruments. The temporal resolution measured without using broadening technology is approximately 78 ps. When the excitation pulse is applied to the PC, the pulse dilation technique is used to increase the measured temporal resolution to 9 ps. The propagation speed of gated pulses in MCP microstrip lines was measured using fiber bundle method, which is approximately 1.8 × 108 m/s.