Time-magnified photon counting with 550-fs resolution
Abstract
Time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) is an enabling technology for applications such as low-light fluorescence lifetime microscopy and photon counting time-of-flight (ToF) 3D imaging. However, state-of-the-art TCSPC single-photon timing resolution (SPTR) is limited to 3–100 ps by single-photon detectors. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a time-magnified TCSPC (TM-TCSPC) that achieves an ultrashort SPTR of 550 fs with an off-the-shelf single-photon detector. The TM-TCSPC can resolve ultrashort pulses with a 130-fs pulse width difference at a 22-fs accuracy. When applied to photon counting ToF 3D imaging, the TM-TCSPC greatly suppresses the range walk error that limits all photon counting ToF 3D imaging systems by 99.2% and thus provides high depth accuracy and precision of 26 µm and 3 µm, respectively.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Aug 17, 2021
- Source ID
- 10.1364/optica.420816
Entities
People
- Bowen Li
- Jan Bartos
- Shu-Wei Huang
- Yijun Xie
Organizations
- National Science Foundation
- Office of Naval Research
- University of Colorado