Skip to main content
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1982 Mar;79(6):2128–2132. doi: 10.1073/pnas.79.6.2128

Evaluation of single-photon-counting measurements of excited-state lifetimes

Howard E Zimmerman 1, John H Penn 1, Clint W Carpenter 1
PMCID: PMC346139  PMID: 16593174

Abstract

An extremely short instrumental response function for a single-photon-counting system has been obtained by using a low-jitter photomultiplier tube, fast amplification of the single photoelectron pulse from this photomultiplier, a constant fraction discriminator with a wide bandwidth input, and a stable reference timing signal. This synchronously mode-locked laser system has been shown to be capable of measuring the fluorescence lifetimes of compounds from 66 psec to 4.5 nsec. The estimated error in these determinations is 6% or 10 psec, whichever is greater. This apparatus has proved itself to be superior to the previously used nitrogen flashlamp apparatus for the determination of subnanosecond lifetimes. The validity of using deconvolution to determine lifetimes shorter than the instrumental response function has been verified.

Keywords: picosecond, laser, deconvolution, decay rate, fluorescence

Full text

PDF
2128

Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. Ragaz S., Kemp G., Furlan M., Beck E. A. Bleeding disorder with abnormal wound healing, acid-soluble clots and normal factor XIII. Thromb Haemost. 1976 Dec 31;36(3):537–541. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Articles from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America are provided here courtesy of National Academy of Sciences

RESOURCES