Operation
A streak camera operates by transforming the temporal profile of a light pulse into a spatial profile on a detector, by causing a time-varying deflection of the light across the width of the detector. In particular, a light pulse enters the instrument through a narrow slit along one direction. It then gets deflected in the perpendicular direction so that photons that arrive first hit the detector at a different position compared to photons that arrive later.
The resulting image forms a "streak" of light, from which the duration, and other temporal properties, of the light pulse can be inferred. Usually, in order to record periodic phenomena, a streak camera needs to be triggered accordingly, similarly to an oscilloscope.
Read more about this topic: Streak Camera
Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. The only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of “Wut,” is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)
“Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel as if he had as much effect on the final outcome of the operation as a single piece of a jumbo jigsaw puzzle has to its predetermined final design. Only the addition of the missing fragments of the puzzle would reveal if the picture was as he guessed it would be.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)