Note: Design of a full photon-timing recorder down to 1-ns resolution for fluorescence fluctuation measurements.

Abstract

A photon timing recorder was realized in a field programmable gate array to capture all timing data of photons on multiple channels with down to a 1-ns resolution and to transfer all data to a host computer in real-time through universal serial bus with more than 10 M events/s transfer rate. The main concept is that photon time series can be regarded as a serial communication data stream. This recorder was successfully applied for simultaneous measurements of fluorescence fluctuation and lifetime of near-infrared dyes in solution. This design is not only limited to the fluorescence fluctuation measurement but also applicable to any kind of photon counting experiments in a nanosecond time range because of the simple and easily modifiable design.