Effect of the magnetic field on spatio-temporal resolution of a streak tube with single-lens focusing system

The streak tube with a large effective photocathode area, high spatial resolution, and high temporal resolution are essential for improving the detection accuracy of the streak tube imaging lidar (STIL). In this paper, a three-dimensional streak tube with single-lens focusing system is developed in CST STUDIO SUITE to systematically investigate the dependences of the dynamic spatio-temporal resolution on the geomagnetic fields. The electro-magnetic distribution in streak tube is calculated by adopting discretized Maxwell’s equations and Finite integral method (FIM). Monte Carlo (M-C) sampling is used to determine the initial distribution of electrons in the visible photocathode. The photoelectrons trajectories are tracked by using the particle-in-cell (PIC) method. All simulations are conducted under both shield (no magnetic field applied with the 3D model) and unshielded (49524.5 nT magnetic field applied with the 3D model) conditions. The results show that the shielding structure can significantly reduce the spatial dispersion of streak tube, and greatly improve the spatial resolution. In addition, there is little difference in temporal resolution, with or without a shielded structure.