Accurate measurement of the jitter time of GaAs photoconductive semiconductor switches triggered by a one-to-two optical fiber

An improved method is proposed to measure the jitter time of the photoconductive semiconductor switches (PCSSs). A one-to-two fiber is utilized to separate and guide the 1053 nm laser beam to trigger two identical 3-mm-gap GaAs PCSSs synchronously. The jitter time is derived from the time lags of two switches turn-on by the error transfer theory. At a bias voltage of 1 kV, the jitter time is measured as 14.41 ps, which is the lowest jitter of GaAs PCSS that has been reported so far. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4802755]