Investigation of the response time of photomultipliers with microchannel pulse

An yttrium aluminum garnet laser emitting single pulses in the regime of mode self-locking was used to study the response time of prototype photomultipliers fitted with two microchannel plates. The best photomultipliers with a gain of at least 10⁶ generated anode pulses with a rise time not exceeding 0.4 nsec and duration not exceeding 0.6 nsec at midamplitude.