- #36
LmdL
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Blocked the second beam and recorded 5000 patches (overall signal time is about ~8msec). Supposing that coherence time is in usec range this should be enough. Actually I don't know how to measure the coherence time, so I supposed it is in the range of 0.3nsec - 5usec.
Statistics:
Frustrating...
Is there a way to measure the coherence time directly? With help of oscilloscope or something?
By the way, patches are not taken continuously. There is a dead time between each 2 patches FPGA takes. Shouldn't it a be a problem for statistics?
Secondly, each peak in the 2048 graph can represent a photon or many photons. If photon reaches the PMT and it shows a peak (detection of that photon), and there is an additional photon hits a PMT at that time - I'll never know.
For example, is there really only 8 photons here?
So this can be a reason for poor statistics as well. In addition, I think that was a reason for ratio ~1 in my first patches collection, because there I used a 2um pinhole and therefore a chance that each peak represents only 1 photon is quite high.
Of course, in correlation measurements (between the two PMTs) it won't be so important, as for photon counting.
Finally, maybe a stupid question, but still: I use a 532nm laser pointer as light source. As I know, these diode lasers use second harmonics to double the frequency. From what I know about second harmonics, it produces a linear polarized light. May it be the reason I didn't get the peaks? Because from multiple reflections from the mirrors, second beam may have lost a majority of "correlated" photons before reaching the PMT.
I will try to replace the green pointer with HeNe laser and see if anything changes.
And one more thing. As you already saw, all parts in my system are "in-axis", which means that majority of the light I detect, came in a straight line from the laser after passing a diffuser. But if it came in a straight line - it wasn't diffused. Is it worth to slightly "tilt" the laser, so light that enters the pinhole is for sure a diffused one? Something like this:
Or in this case I will get something similar to LED and I actually need the "main" beam?
And, of course, thank you for help! It is very appreciated.
Statistics:
Frustrating...
Is there a way to measure the coherence time directly? With help of oscilloscope or something?
By the way, patches are not taken continuously. There is a dead time between each 2 patches FPGA takes. Shouldn't it a be a problem for statistics?
Secondly, each peak in the 2048 graph can represent a photon or many photons. If photon reaches the PMT and it shows a peak (detection of that photon), and there is an additional photon hits a PMT at that time - I'll never know.
For example, is there really only 8 photons here?
So this can be a reason for poor statistics as well. In addition, I think that was a reason for ratio ~1 in my first patches collection, because there I used a 2um pinhole and therefore a chance that each peak represents only 1 photon is quite high.
Of course, in correlation measurements (between the two PMTs) it won't be so important, as for photon counting.
Finally, maybe a stupid question, but still: I use a 532nm laser pointer as light source. As I know, these diode lasers use second harmonics to double the frequency. From what I know about second harmonics, it produces a linear polarized light. May it be the reason I didn't get the peaks? Because from multiple reflections from the mirrors, second beam may have lost a majority of "correlated" photons before reaching the PMT.
I will try to replace the green pointer with HeNe laser and see if anything changes.
And one more thing. As you already saw, all parts in my system are "in-axis", which means that majority of the light I detect, came in a straight line from the laser after passing a diffuser. But if it came in a straight line - it wasn't diffused. Is it worth to slightly "tilt" the laser, so light that enters the pinhole is for sure a diffused one? Something like this:
Or in this case I will get something similar to LED and I actually need the "main" beam?
And, of course, thank you for help! It is very appreciated.