Bovolenta Angela, Cominelli Alessandro, Acconcia Giulia, Rech Ivan
Opt Lett. 2024 Mar 15;49(6):1563-1566. doi: 10.1364/OL.511914.
One major drawback of the classic time-correlated single photon counting (TCSPC) technique is pileup-related distortion. To keep it under a reasonable level, the maximum count rate has to be reduced, posing a serious limitation to the overall measurement speed. This means that there is an intrinsic trade-off between speed and distortion: either count rate is raised, but distortion is worsened, or distortion is minimized at the expense of speed. In both cases, it is impossible to precisely evaluate the degree of distortion introduced. Here comes our new, to the best of our knowledge, figure of merit, which is able to provide a numerical estimate of the distortion whatever the signal shape is, marking a real turning point in the way of doing TCSPC. In this article, this new parameter will be defined and its effectiveness will be demonstrated by means of mathematical computations.
经典的时间相关单光子计数（TCSPC）技术的一个主要缺点是与堆积相关的失真。为了将其保持在合理水平，必须降低最大计数率，这对整体测量速度造成了严重限制。这意味着在速度和失真之间存在内在的权衡：要么提高计数率，但失真会恶化，要么以速度为代价将失真最小化。在这两种情况下，都无法精确评估引入的失真程度。据我们所知，这就是我们新的品质因数，无论信号形状如何，它都能够提供失真的数值估计，这标志着TCSPC方法的一个真正转折点。在本文中，将定义这个新参数，并通过数学计算证明其有效性。
