A new "streak" tube has been developed for use in diagnostic applications involving very high-speed optical transients such as the Shiva laser-fusion studies at the University of California's Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. The tube combines the direct read-out characteristics of a CCD (charge-coupled device) with the high-speed deflection system incorporated in the light-shutter image tube to give immediate electronic read-out of information suitable for data processing. The front section of the tube is an image-intensifier stage with an infrared-sensitive photoc thode (S-1) sensitive to the laser wavelength of 1.06 micrometers. When the laser beam is incident on the photocathode, the emitted stream of electrons is accelerated and deflected by a ramp voltage applied to deflecting electrodes. The deflected beam impacts the CCD, producing several thousand electron-hole pairs per photoelectron. The charge pattern is then scanned out providing a time-intensitv profile of the laser beam.

Date Published: 12 December 1979
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 0203, Recent Advances in TV Sensors and Systems, (12 December 1979); doi: 10.1117/12.958125

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0203:
Recent Advances in TV Sensors and Systems
Charles Freeman, Editor(s)