Detecting single photons can be seen as the backbone of cutting-edge applications like LiDAR, medical imaging, and secure optical communication. Miss one, and critical information could be lost forever. That’s where FPGA-based instrumentation comes in, delivering picosecond-level precision with zero dead time. If you are intrigued, consider sitting in on the 1-hour webinar that [Dr. Jason Ball], engineer at Liquid Instruments, will host on April 15th. You can read the announcement here.
Before you sign up and move on, we’ll peek into a bit of the matter upfront. The power lies in the hardware’s flexibility and speed. It has the ability to timestamp every photon event with a staggering 10 ps resolution. That’s comparable to measuring the time it takes light to travel just a few millimeters. Unlike traditional photon counters that choke on high event rates, this FPGA-based setup is reconfigurable, tracking up to four events in parallel without missing a beat. From Hanbury-Brown-Twiss experiments to decoding pulse-position modulated (PPM) data, it’s an all-in-one toolkit for photon wranglers. [Jason] will go deeper into the subject and do a few live experiments.
Measuring single photons can be achieved with photomultipliers as well. If exploring the possibilities of FPGA’s is more your thing, consider reading this article.
i’m sure liquid instruments appreciates you reposting their sponsored content. hopefully you’re getting kickbacks at least.
I sorta think this is cool and I’m a daily reader… I might sign up just to see how they are thinking about counting photons without a photomultiplier… Honestly I plan to just get the TLDR afterward, but just wanted to mention that sponsored doesn’t always mean bad or not applicable.
It certainly implies they have a detector with no dead-time. Maybe a solid state detector or something like a back illuminated CCD. Coincidence detection is pretty exhaustively explored. Maybe this is about the big arrays of detectors in particle accelerators. I can see anything that improves detection is good for nuclear medicine, which can be about detecting photon pairs from positron annihilation, usually from an injection of Sodium22 (510kV gamma) IIRC, as the patient watches a movie
Aren’t all FPGAs reconfigurable? The title is very annoying or maybe I’m missing something?
Yes, but not all systems that utilize FPGAs are reconfigurable. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, perhaps that’s what was meant.
Mask programmable and OTP FPGA’s are exists, but rare.