Preamplifiers

The first 3 items of the above list (waveguides, transducers and preamplifiers) are located at or near to the component(s) to be monitored. The other items must be installed in the control room area, mounted into a single instrumentation rack (fig. 4). 

Transducers twelve 375 kHz resonant transducers have been used, with a 350 kHz cutoff frequency high pass filter section and a 40 dB preamplifier. 

Figure Bl.10.2. Schematic diagram of a counting experiment. The detector intercepts signals from the source. The output of the detector is amplified by a preamplifier and then shaped and amplified friitlier by an amplifier. The discriminator has variable lower and upper level tliresholds. If a signal from the amplifier exceeds tlie lower tlireshold while remaming below the upper tlireshold, a pulse is produced that can be registered by a preprogrammed counter. The contents of the counter can be periodically transferred to an online storage device for fiirther processing and analysis. The pulse shapes produced by each of the devices are shown schematically above tlieni.

Figure Bl.10.7. Electron impact ionization coincidence experiment. The experiment consists of a source of incident electrons, a target gas sample and two electron detectors, one for the scattered electron, the other for the ejected electron. The detectors are coimected tlirough preamplifiers to the inputs (start and stop) of a time-to-amplitiide converter (TAC). The output of the TAC goes to a pulse-height-analyser (PHA) and then to a nuiltichaimel analyser (MCA) or computer.

There are a number of observations to be drawn from the above fomuila the relative uncertainty can be reduced to an arbitrarily small value by increasing T, but because the relative uncertainty is proportional to /s/f, a reduction in relative uncertainty by a factor of two requires a factor of four increase in collection time. The relative uncertainty can also be reduced by reducing At. Flere, it is understood that At is the smallest time window that just includes all of the signal. At can be decreased by using the fastest possible detectors, preamplifiers and discriminators and minimizing time dispersion in the section of the experiment ahead of the detectors. 

Where stray currents are involved, several measurements have to be taken that are continually changing with time, simultaneously with each other. A double recorder is most suitable for this. Linear recorders with direct indication of the measurements cannot be used for potential measurements because the torque of the mechanism is too small to overcome the friction of the pen on the paper. Amplified recorders or potentiometer recorders are used to record potentials. In amplified recorders, as in amplified voltmeters, the measured signal is converted into a load-independent impressed current and transmitted to the measuring mechanism, which consists of a torque motor with a preamplifier. The amplifier results in an... 

Limitations in the digitizer s dynamic range can be overcome by using multiple transient recorders operating at diflerent sensitivities, or by adding logarithmic preamplifiers in the detection system. From the preceding discussion it appears, however, that quantitative analysis is not the primary area of application of LIMS. Semiquantitative and qualitative applications of LIMS have been developed and are discussed in the remainder of this article. 

Fig. 4.6. Cross section of the front end of an SSD (solid-state detector), here Gold contact with a grooved Si(Li) crystal. Crystal and preamplifier are connected with a cooled copper rod and shielded by a case with an end cap and Be window [4.21, 4.29].

Counter tube, behind collimator, and preamplifier inside case... 

Figure 19. A set of 6 frequency-doubled, Q-switched Nd YAG lasers are used to pump the DM0, preamplifier and power amplifier.

The 6 Nd YAG lasers pump the DM0, preamplifier and power amplifier (Fig. 19, Friedman et al., 1998). The YAG lasers are built from commercially available flashlamp/laser rod assemblies, acousto-optic Q-switches and frequency doubling crystals (LBO and KTP). Most of the mirror mounts and crystal holders are commercial. Nd YAGs are frequency doubled to 532 nm using a nonlinear crystal. The Nd YAG rod and nonlinear crystal are both in the pump laser cavity to provide efficient frequency conversion. The 532 nm light is coupled out through a dichroic and fed to multimode fibers which transport the light to the DM0 and amplifier dye cells. 

The pump lasers were designed and built at LLNL. Two laser cavity configurations are employed. Two "L" shaped cavities run at the full system repetition rate of 26 kHz, producing 40-50 W per laser. They pump the DM0 and preamplifier dye cells. Four "Z" cavity lasers run at 13 kHz, each producing between 60-80 W. They are interleaved in the power amplifier dye cell to produce an effective 26 kHz repetition rate. Flashlamps were used to pump the frequency-doubled YAG lasers as diode-pumps were much more expensive at the time the Keck LGS was designed. In addition, high wavefront quality is not required... 

After the preamplifier, the beam is expanded to 2 mm, collimated and imaged onto a 1 mm aperture, producing a flat-top intensity profile. A 3-element telescope relays the aperture plane to the amplifier with a collimated 0.5-mm diameter. The telescope contains a spatial filter pinhole. The nominal power levels are 3 mW into the preamp, 500 mW out of the preamp and 200 mW out of the aperture. A 6° angle of incidence bounce beam geometry is utilized in the amplifier cell. The "bounce" foofprinf overlaps with the 4 pump beam fibers, arranged in 2 time sefs of 13 kHz. The pump fibers have f 50-60% fransmission. The amplifier brings the power up to < 20 W at 26 kHz. 

In optical domain, preamplifier is no more an utopia and is in actual use in fiber communication. However quantum physics prohibits the noiseless cloning of photons an amplifier must have a spectral density of noise greater than 1 photon/spatial mode (a "spatial mode" corresponds to a geometrical extent of A /4). Most likely, an optical heterodyne detector will be limited by the photon noise of the local oscillator and optical preamplifier will not increase the detectivity of the system. 

Adjustable Workbench (PAW) instrument assembly. The SH shown in Figs. 3.15 and 3.16 contains the electromechanical transducer (mounted in the center), the main and reference Co/Rh sources, multilayered radiation shields, detectors and their preamplifiers and main (linear) amplifiers, and a contact plate and sensor. The contact plate and contact sensor are used in conjunction with the IDD to apply a small preload when it places the SH holding it firmly against the target. The electronics board contains power supplies/conditioners, the dedicated CPU, different kinds of memory, firmware, and associated circuitry for instrument control and data processing. The SH of the miniaturized Mossbauer spectrometer MIMOS II has the dimensions (5 x 5.5 x 9.5) cm and weighs only ca. 400 g. Both 14.4 keV y-rays and 6.4 keV Fe X-rays are detected simultaneously by four Si-PIN diodes. The mass of the electronics board is about 90 g [36],... 

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