Ultra short nuclear lifetimes measured with fast detectors and faster electronics

A new approach for measuring lifetimes of nuclear states at the electronic signal processing stage has been tested. Cerium doped lanthanum bromide inorganic scintillator crystals are used as suitable candidates for fast-timing measurements, in the sub-nanosecond region. The pulse processing of fast timing detectors has been performed using fast amplifiers together with FPGA (field-programmable gate array) based signal discrimination and time measurement in a 10 ps (rms- root mean square) TDC (time-to-digital convertor). The performance from the timing perspective has been tested in an accelerated ion-beam experiment.