A simple jitter-free picosecond streak camera

Using a DC-biased room-temperature photoconductive switching element, a picosecond resolution optical streak camera is operated at sweep rates up to 7 ps/mm. Single-shot jitter is 2 ps with complete absence of short and long-term drift characteristic of all other sweep drivers. This high accuracy allows the streak camera to be used in a single-shot averaging mode which leads to a sub-picosecond absolute timing accuracy. When operated in this manner, the streak camera becomes a highly reliable and accurate device for measuring transient events on a time scale of single picoseconds. The simplicity of this method makes it highly attractive for many applications in laser fusion and picosecond chemistry and photophysics studies where reliable no-drift operation is highly desirable.