Dead time

I?m counting photons and at high count rates I see a drop off in the numb er counted. It seems this may be due to the dead time of the detector. (H ow long it takes to recover after detecting one event till it can see the n ext.) So I found this in wiki,

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My question is about the following equation,

(That probably won?t work.) So it says the real number of events N~= Nm /(1 - Nm*tau*T) where Nm is number measured, tau is the dead tim e, and T is the measurement time. I?m wondering about the approximate si gn. I figured it should be exactly equal to the above result. (But maybe I?m missing something.)

My reasoning is as follows, (OK first I wrote my equations for the rate of counts.) So I?ll call R_r the real rate of events, and R_m the measured rate. I?ll stick with tau for the dead time, and T for total time.) Then the real number of events I should count is, N_r = R_r*T, and the measured number is N_m = R_m *T. Now the total dead time is N_m*tau, and the number of events I missed durin g that total dead time is, N_missed = N_m*tau*R_r = R_m*R_r*tau*T. Then the real counts should be the number measured + the number missed. Or, R_r*T = R_m*T + R_m*R_r*tau*T

Dropping big T, I get R_r = R_m + R_m*R_r*tau or R_r = R_m / (1 ? Rm*tau) which is the equation from wiki, without the approimate sign.

Oh..frick.. I just realized that my detector is paralyzable (to use the wik i language.) (An event in the dead time resets the dead time.) That puts a monkey wrenc h in the works. Well, I'll post anyway, Thanks for reading.

George H.

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George Herold
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counted. It seems this may be due to the dead time of the detector. (How long it takes to recover after detecting one event till it can see the next.)

T is the measurement time. I?m wondering about the approximate sign. I figured it should be exactly equal to the above result. (But maybe I?m missing something.)

real rate of events, and R_m the measured rate. I?ll stick with tau for the dead time, and T for total time.)

that total dead time is, N_missed = N_m*tau*R_r = R_m*R_r*tau*T.

language.)

the works.

Yeah, at high rates you may get no counts. Geiger counters do that. If your geiger counter indicates no radiation, either it's broken or you're dead.

--
John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    
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John Larkin

counted. It seems this may be due to the dead time of the detector. (How long it takes to recover after detecting one event till it can see the next.)

and T is the measurement time. I?m wondering about the approximate sign. I figured it should be exactly equal to the above result. (But maybe I?m missing something.)

That is almost right provided that the number of counts in the dead time correction remains small and roughly a Poisson distribution of N apart from the fact that it should be dimensionless tau/T not tau*T.

It also assumes that there is a single tau that describes the detector recovery time accurately which might not be entirely true if the photons are not monochromatic and so have different energies. Basically the pulse size out of your detector depends on the number of electrons in it and the recovery time to recharge afterwards.

The correct answer usually lies between that which assumes non-paralysable (which isn't true) and the worst case which assumes every would be count event paralyses the detector for tau. This is necessarily an over estimate of the correction since some will overlap. It isn't worth the effort to solve a cubic though!

N ~ Nm/(1-N*tau/T)

Hence a quadratic equation for N

N^2(tau/T) - N + Nm = 0

with solution N ~ (1 - sqrt(1 - 4(tau/T)Nm))T/tau/2

approx N ~ 1/(1-3(tau/T)Nm)

Subject to typos and algebraic errors. The actual answer for any detector subject to dead time is bounded by these two extremes.

real rate of events, and R_m the measured rate. I?ll stick with tau for the dead time, and T for total time.)

that total dead time is, N_missed = N_m*tau*R_r = R_m*R_r*tau*T.

language.)

in the works.

ISTR An event inside the dead time doesn't always completely reset the dead time. If deadtime correction is more than 10% it becomes less accurate. It is very definitely a ~ correction equation although for some detectors you can tweak it empirically to do a little better.

You also have to consider lifetime wear and tear on the photocathode.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown
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Martin Brown

number counted. It seems this may be due to the dead time of the detector. (How long it takes to recover after detecting one event till it can see t he next.)

d time, and T is the measurement time. I?m wondering about the approxima te sign. I figured it should be exactly equal to the above result. (But m aybe I?m missing something.)

Grin.. yeah I saw my translation mistake.. but I figured I'd leave it be.. people like to have something to 'fix'.

In this case that's almost exactly true. We got in a few thousand LED's for our Spad. (A lifetime supply.) See here,

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(Ignore the personal stuff about me... written by my boss.) I was spot checking the shipment and found one 'golden' LED. It shows one isolated channel with basically the same pulse height every time... really sweet. (rather than the more typical array of heights as seen in figure 2. )

Hmm OK maybe not as bad as I thought then. It's an RC reset time, but if I set the threshold up high, then the RC is ~linear, then I could assume tha t on average the missed pulse was in the middle, so an addition 1/2 tau... OK more thinking required on my part.

OK thanks.. I'll have to check your answer tonight.

Thanks Martin... I was getting ~20% type corrections at the highest countin g rates... (~2.5 us dead time, 75k Hz count rate) And then the LED has this nasty after-pulsing, that screws up the count for low rates.

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

counted. It seems this may be due to the dead time of the detector. (How long it takes to recover after detecting one event till it can see the next.)

T is the measurement time. I?m wondering about the approximate sign. I figured it should be exactly equal to the above result. (But maybe I?m missing something.)

real rate of events, and R_m the measured rate. I?ll stick with tau for the dead time, and T for total time.)

that total dead time is, N_missed = N_m*tau*R_r = R_m*R_r*tau*T.

language.)

in the works.

I'll op for the latter!

Jamie

Reply to
Jamie

counted. It seems this may be due to the dead time of the detector. (How long it takes to recover after detecting one event till it can see the next.)

and T is the measurement time. I?m wondering about the approximate sign. I figured it should be exactly equal to the above result. (But maybe I?m missing something.)

real rate of events, and R_m the measured rate. I?ll stick with tau for the dead time, and T for total time.)

that total dead time is, N_missed = N_m*tau*R_r = R_m*R_r*tau*T.

language.)

in the works.

"Dead time" for sure.

--
John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
John Larkin

people like to have something to 'fix'.

Any particular choice of LED best or do they all sort of work? Potentially a useful pulse counting demo for showing to school teachers.

SPAD to me is another thing entirely.

UK safety critical work uses it for (railway) Signal Passed at Danger. IOW a driver going through a red light with a train - often a precursor to a major collision if there is no secondary safety system.

isolated channel with basically the same pulse height every time... really sweet. (rather than the more typical array of heights as seen in figure 2.)

But mostly they presumably have multiple channels with different gain.

set the threshold up high, then the RC is ~linear, then I could assume that on average the missed pulse was in the middle, so an addition 1/2 tau...

NB If you try to compute this directly it will suffer rounding error use

N ~ 2*tau*Nm/(1 + sqrt(1-4(tau/T)Nm))/T

Which is numerically stable (again subject to typos)

You can get an empirical fit using 1 ISTR An event inside the dead time doesn't always completely reset the

rates... (~2.5 us dead time, 75k Hz count rate)

low rates.

I wonder if there is any way to make the recovery a bit faster?

Once the channel has stopped conducting you might be able to have a comparator that zaps it with a faster recharging rate between two very carefully chosen limit voltages.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown
Reply to
Martin Brown

e.. people like to have something to 'fix'.

s

Only one LED AND114-R works at 'low voltage'. I found that other LEDs woul d avalanche but up above 100V.. there seemed to be some photo-response but I didn't look too hard.

one isolated channel with basically the same pulse height every time... rea lly sweet. (rather than the more typical array of heights as seen in figur e 2.)

Each channel seems to be separate.. I haven't seen one channel effecting th e other. (like causing more after pulsing in that channel.) Each channel has it's own breakdown voltage, and the pulse height is the difference betw een bais voltage and breakdown voltage... I don't know if I would character ize each channel with a 'gain'. A breakdown 'event' seems to discharge the entire capacitance of the LED. So in that regard there is some channel to channel interaction. And each channel seems to have it's own after pulsing probability. A few channels are really 'bad' in that regard and after brea king down once, (from maybe a photon) will just go on and on... Actually fr om a physics point of view the after pulsing is interesting. A non-random pulse stream... So here's some dark count data. Plotted is a histogram of the time between pulses vs the number of occurrences. Instead of the 'norm al' log-linear plot, this is log-log.

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(I can re-post a a bit map if you can't see the wmf file)

ns

it

I haven't looked much at the wavelength response. But the pulse height see ms independent of the source... after pulsing looks the same as photon indu ced breakdown.

.

if I set the threshold up high, then the RC is ~linear, then I could assume that on average the missed pulse was in the middle, so an addition 1/2 tau ...

e

nting rates... (~2.5 us dead time, 75k Hz count rate)

for low rates.

Sure! Reduce the 100k ohm resistor. So 10k ohm is ten times faster.. but then you've got to keep the bias voltage just above the breakdown voltage o r the breakdown doesn't quench. I played around a bit with some active que nching circuits... but really not worth the trouble.

Search for "Avalanche photodiodes and quenching circuits" There's a article on the web by S.Cova etal. in applied optics (vol. 35 #12, pg 1956) (1996) (I copied a link.. but way too long.)

One issue with making it fast is you see more after pulsing. The log-log da rk count data I posted falls off at short time (1 and 2 us) only because of the dead time.

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

Grumble.. try this instead

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Still getting use to dropbox... maybe I should read the manual? Nahhh

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

The first one was OK apart from the "clever" WMF transparency and the observational dots were a bit on the small side to see in my rendering.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown
Reply to
Martin Brown

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