Dead time

After a single detection arrives, a detector automatically becomes disabled by a lapse known as dead time. This disable time helps to avoid residual avalanches and therefore improves accuracy of the detector.

In the same fashion, it might be useful to set larger ‘dead time’ for a detector to reduce some side effects such as electrical pulse reflections due to impedance mismatching, or residual electron avalanches due to high count rates known as afterpulsing.

In a Tausand Abacus you can set a dead time per input to disable temporarily each port after a single detection arrives. It is recommended to set this parameter initially as the factory reported detector dead time.