The Chronotron Alpha Meter

The Chronotron Alpha Meter is an instrument developed at EG&G Las Vegas to measure the time difference between two discrete levels of a pulse to an accuracy of a few picoseconds. The instrument output is a DC level which corresponds to this time difference. This instrument has been used to measure the rate of rise of fast single transient waveforms such as the exponent, alpha (¿), of a positive exponential signal of the form E = Eoe¿t. Other typical applications of the chronotron are for measuring time intervals between pulses, linearity of ramps and the rise rate and shape of any continuously rising analytical function.