A facility for the registration of light fluxes meant for the study of their properties with high temporal resolution is described.
The “Quantochron 4-48” acquisition facility measures the photon arrival times using periodic signals of three types-second-long
period signals (pps), 10-kHz, and 30-MHz signals. The first two come from a GPS, whereas the latter signal comes from the
PCI bus of the computer connected to the facility. These time scales are used to produce for each time instant a 28-bit time
code supplemented by 48 bits bearing the information about the coordinates, energy, and polarization of the photon at the
output of the detector. The sequence of complete 64-bit words is buffered in FIFO memory and sent to computer RAM. The device
has as its base element a XILINX SPARTAN XCS40XL PQ240AKP0505 microchip incorporated into a PCI slot. The registration facility
consists of two PC servers equipped with these boards and a control computer. The facility determines the photon arrival times
to within 30 ns with a dead time of 30 ns and maximum lossless count rate of 10
6 photons/s. The registration facility allows continuous recording of detector counts over 17 hours with a one microsecond
World-Time (UT) calibration accuracy.
PACS numbers 95.55.Sh - 95.75.Wx
Original Russian Text © V.L. Plokhotnichenko, A.V. Solin, A.G. Tikhonov, 2009, published in Astrofizicheskij Byulleten, 2009,
Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 204–212.