An Electronic Correlator for Photoelectric Correlation Measurements

Abstract

An instrument has been developed for determining intensity correlation functions of a light beam with high accuracy. It is based on digital storage of the arrival times of up to six photoelectric pulses following a start pulse. The times are stored in the memory of a multichannel analyzer, such that the histogram of arrival times is a direct measure of the form of the intensity correlation function. The correlator allows data to be accumulated at a much higher rate than in a time‐to‐amplitude converter.