John Vallerga Abstract

John Vallerga
Space Science Laboratory - UC Berkeley

"Neutrons to Nanoparticles, Pulsars to Planets? New applications for microchannel plate imaging detectors"

ABSTRACT:

Microchannel plates (MCPs) are a two dimensional array of holes in glass that act as electron amplifiers such that any input quanta that can release a photoelectron (e.g. photons, electrons or neutrons) and will result in an avalanche of charge that determines the location and time of the input pitch (< 10 microns) and temporal resolution less than 200ps have been demonstrated for individual quanta. At the Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, we have developed detectors for many space missions (e.g. the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on Hubble), but also biological imagers that measure fluroescence lifetime of nanoparticles, neutron tomographic imagers and time of flight electron / ion spectrometers. In this talk, I will review MCP detectors in general and discuss their strengths in various applications from low flux astronomy to bright beamlines.