A dedicated data acquisition system for ion velocity measurements of laserproduced plasmas

This paper describes the design of a multi-channel 25 MSPS (mega samples pe r second) data acquisition system. The approach is based on a flash analog to digital converter and a FIFO (first in first out) memory. This system is used for acquiring the ion velocity profiles using Langmuir probes in lase r plasma interaction experiments carried out using a high power Nd:glass la ser. These profiles are displayed on the personal computer monitor and proc essed for calculating the ion velocities. The digitized data is stored for further analysis.