PicoQuant has introduced an extended version of HydraHarp 400, its multichannel picosecond event timer and time-correlated single photon counting system that can now accomodate up to eight independent input channels. Each channel is based on a novel time digitiser with 1 picosecond resolution, a processing rate of 12.5 million counts per second, a very short dead time and an extremely low differential non-linearity.
The HydraHarp 400 is modular and can be fitted with 2, 4, 6 or 8 identical input channels and a common sync channel. The large number of input channels qualifies the instrument for advanced applications such as Diffuse Optical Tomography (DOT). All channels operate independently, but with a common crystal time base. Therefore, not only TCSPC histograms, but also picosecond coincidence correlations across all channels can be obtained. The latter is of great interest in single molecule work and quantum information processing research. A time-tagged data collection mode provides a stream of individual timing events to the host computer that can be processed and analysed with virtually unlimited flexibility, e.g. for photon burst detection, coincidence correlation or for combined measurement of fluorescence lifetime and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS).