Dead-time effects in TCSPC data analysis

摘要

In Time Correlated Single Photon Counting (TCSPC) the maximum signal throughput is limited by the occurrence of classical pile-up and dead-time effects: At a given photon rate characteristic distortions become visible in the TCSPC histogram. How to describe these distortions in mathematical terms is well known1,2. While the approach of correcting these distortions directly by operations on the raw data has drawbacks, e.g. with respect to calculation effort as well as numerical stability, it is comparably straightforward to include corrections in the models describing the data. We demonstrate the applicability of a model based approach on decay data which are heavily distorted by dead-time and pile-up effects.