Tests of an Optical Triggering System on the Z Accelerator

Summary form only given. The inertial confinement fusion program at the Z accelerator requires a triggering system with +/- 100 ps jitter for micro channel plate based instruments. Currently the best triggering systems utilize a current drive produced near the Z-pinch load and has a jitter of +/- 1 ns. We present the first tests of a new triggering method that utilizes the early light emission from the Z-pinch source. The system drives an avalanche trigger with a fast rising electrical pulse generated by a quartz silica multimode fiber and an optical to electrical converter. This new method may provide a jitter that is significantly less than +/- 1 ns