52 BD FACSAria User’s Guide
Signal Detection
From the cuvette flow cell, scattered and fluorescent light is collected by the
fluorescent objective lens. The lens collects and focuses fluorescent light emitted
at each of the laser focal points onto individual collection fibers. These fibers
transfer the emitted light to the individual detector arrays.
The following sections describes how laser light is detected and translated into
signals that can be displayed in a plot.
Detector Arrays
There are two types of detector arrays in the BD FACSAria flow cytometer: an
octagon and trigons. The octagon detects SSC and up to seven fluorescent signals
excited by the 488-nm (blue) laser. The trigons detect fluorescent signals excited
by the 633-nm (red) and 405-nm (violet) lasers, respectively. Each trigon can
detect up to three fluorescent channels. (An optical upgrade is required to fill all
detection channels.)
Figure 2-6 Octagon and trigon detector arrays
Each detector array houses dichroic and bandpass filters, which steer and filter
the emitted light, and photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), which detect light signals.
blue-laser signalred-laser signalviolet-laser signal
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