Near-zero distortion in TCSPC at more than one photon per excitation period: experimental validation
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) technique is widely renowned for its capability of reconstructing rapid and weak light signals with exceptional sensitivity and sub-picosecond timing resolution. Unfortunately, the speed of TCSPC has been historically severely limited to avoid a phenomenon known as pileup distortion. For this reason, the count rate of a classic TCSPC acquisition channel is kept below a few percent of the laser excitation rate (usually 1%-5%). In this work, we experimentally validate a novel, to our knowledge, TCSPC theory recently reported that effectively overcomes such a limitation and finally achieves high-speed operation without distortion. Exploiting a single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD), in this paper we show how to acquire additional information about the status of the system at run time, and by combining it with the classic TCSPC data histogram, we report how a count rate of approximately 60% of the excitation frequency with near-zero distortion can indeed be achieved with a commercial system.
Source: Optics Letters
DOI: 10.1364/ol.534363
Language: English
Subfield: Instrumentation
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: G2602948479, G598502428, G7971209129
OpenAlex ID: W4401636403