2025/10/07 by Dmitrij Ševaev, Ševaev, Dmitrij, A. Nomerotski +16
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Detector #Focus (optics) #Force Microscopy Techniques and Applications #Ion #Laser #Nanoparticle #Nanosecond #Near-Field Optical Microscopy #Photonic and Optical Devices #Ultrashort pulse
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2510.05855
openalex publication_date 2025/10/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
We present a novel application of the Timepix3 optical camera (Tpx3Cam) for investigating ultrafast dynamics in substrate-free nanoparticles at the Extreme Light Infrastructure European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ELI ERIC). The camera, integrated into an ion imaging system based on a micro-channel plate (MCP) and a fast P47 scintillator, enables individual time-stamping of incoming ions with nanosecond timing precision and high spatial resolution. The detector successfully captured laser-induced ion events originating from free nanoparticles disintegrated by intense laser pulses. Owing to the broad size distribution of the nanoparticles (10-500 nm) and the variation in laser intensities within the interaction volume, the detected events range in occupancy from near-zero to extremely high, approaching the readout limits of the detector. By combining time-of-flight and velocity map imaging (VMI) techniques, detailed post-processing and analysis were performed. The results presented here focus on the performance of Tpx3Cam under high-occupancy conditions, which are of particular relevance to this study. These conditions approach the limitations imposed by the camera readout capabilities and challenge the effectiveness of standard post-processing algorithms. We investigated these limitations and associated trade-offs, and we present improved methods and algorithms designed to extract the most informative features from the data.