Streak Tube Readout
A streak tube readout is commonly used to obtain intensity vs. spatial or spectral information over time periods of picoseconds to nanoseconds. A huge advantage to streak tubes is they provide continuous data (capable of catching a single transient event). They help researchers find applications in combustion analysis, pulsed-laser characterization, plasma physics, and a variety of spectroscopy applications where transient events are studied.
As shown, the streak tube output is a phosphor screen. This can be optically coupled using a lens or fiberoptic taper to a CCD camera for readout and recording. Typically, a 12- or 14-bit camera is adequate to match the streak tube's dynamic range, but for demanding applications 16-bit cameras with a 1:1 fiberoptic and back-illuminated CCD are used.
The streak tube image below shows both spectral (top) and spatial (bottom) information. The series of dots in the middle are time fiducial marks generated by an LED pulsed at a known frequency.
Image courtesy of Dr. Dennis Paisley, Los Alamos National Laboratories.
Recommended Products:
Quad-RO
- Compact detector design with Industry standard firewire (IEEE 1394a) interface
- Electronically balanced quadrants to deliver extremely uniform raw image
- Two readout speeds / port
- Four port and single port readout options
- On board memory to guarantee loss free images
PI-SCX
- Patented fiberoptic-coupling preserves highest possible resolution
- 16-bit digitization provides wide dynamic range and Signal-to-noise ratio
- High-sensitivity provides capability to image very faint diffracting samples
PIXIS-XO
- Deep cooling with lifetime vacuum guarantee
- Read noise as low as 2.5 e- rms
- Ultra-high time resolution with kinetics readout mode
PIXIS-XF
- Proprietary fiber-optic coupling preserves highest resolution
- Flexible design allows phosphor removal for system optimization
- Compact design with USB 2.0 interface and LINUX support