Development of photon counting technique to operate from discrete photons to continuous regime using DAQ card in LabVIEW platform

Abstract

A sensor like a photomultiplier tube (PMT) has shown many applications, particularly in the photon counting regime, where it generates discrete electrical pulses in response to the input photons. Commercially available photon counters used to count these pulses assuming the incident photons in the discrete form. In general, whenever two or more photons arrive concurrently, the photon counter record it as a single pulse and count it as single count. On the contrary, when continuous photons arrive, the discrete photon counting approach ceases to function, and a continuous capture technique is used to estimate the photons intensity. In this article, a photon-counting method based on a data acquisition card (DAQ Model: Agilent U1071A), which works in the discrete to continuous photon regime where the commercial photon counters stop counting is described. To facilitate the precise counting of the discrete and merged pulses, a program has been developed in LabVIEW incorporating the logic of pulse width and amplitude. The developed technique is tested for its functionality and compared with the commercially available photon counter SR400. The outcomes of the study indicate that the developed system is capable of operating from discrete photons to a continuous regime and has a better dynamic range than the SR400 gated photon counter.