Single photon imaging at ultra-high resolution

We present a detection system capable of imaging both single photon/positive ion and multiple coincidence photons/positive ions with extremely high spatial resolution. In this detector the photoelectrons excited by the incoming photons are multiplied by microchannel plate(s) (MCP). The process of multiplication is spatially constrained within an MCP pore, which can be as small as 4 mu m for commercially available MCPs. An electron cloud originated by a single photoelectron is then encoded by a pixellated custom analog ASIC consisting of 105 K charge sensitive pixels of 50 mu m in size arranged on a hexagonal grid. Each pixel registers the charge with an accuracy of < 100 electrons rms. Computation of the event centroid from the readout charges results in an accurate event position. A large number of simultaneous photons spatially separated by similar to 0.4 mm can be detected simultaneously allowing multiple coincidence operation for the experiments where a large number of incoming photons/positive ions have to be detected simultaneously. The experimental results prove that the spatial resolution of the readout system itself is similar to 3 mu m FWHM enabling detection resolution better than 6 1 pm for the small pore MCPs. An attractive feature of the detection system is its capability to register the timing of each incoming photon/positive ion (in single photon detection mode) or of the first incoming particle (for the multiple coincidence detection) with an accuracy of similar to 130ps FWHM. There is also virtually no dark count noise in the detection system making it suitable for low count rate applications. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.