High frequency electric autocorrelator

An electric autocorrelator was designed and built to measure signals of picosecond risetime and duration at low repetition frequencies. Fast sampling scopes require thousands of shots to measure such a signal, taking a long time, making accurate synchronization difficult. The availability of affordable RF components has made a high frequency electric autocorrelator feasible. With this autocorrelator, the length of picosecond pulses can be measured without the need for synchronization. The components of the autocorrelator have been simulated. These calculations have demonstrated that this device can mimic the theoretical autocorrelate of a signal. The autocorrelator has been tested using a 40 Gbit pattern generator. From these measurements the bandwidth of the autocorrelator has been determined to be at least 25 GHz. We intend to use the autocorrelator to measure the rise time of a photoconductive plasma switch and the length of electron bunches from an ultracold plasma. The results of the measurements show that this device is suitable for these experiments