Megapixels @ Megahertz - The AGIPD high-speed cameras for the European XFEL

摘要

The European XFEL is an extremely brilliant Free Electron Laser Source with a very demanding pulse structure: trains of 2700 X-ray pulses are repeated at 10 Hz. The pulses inside the train are spaced by 220 ns and each one contains up to 10(12) photons of 12.4 keV, while being = 100 fs in length. AGIPD, the Adaptive Gain Integrating Pixel Detector, is a hybrid pixel detector developed by DESY, PSI, and the Universities of Bonn and Hamburg to cope with these properties.It is a fast, low noise integrating detector, with single photon sensitivity (for E-gamma (sic) 6 keV) and a large dynamic range, up to 10(4) photons at 12.4 keV. This is achieved with a charge sensitive amplifier with 3 adaptively selected gains per pixel. 352 images can be recorded at up to 6.5MHz and stored in the in-pixel analogue memory and read out between pulse trains. The core component of this detector is the AGIPD ASIC, which consists of 64 x 64 pixels of 200 mu m x 200 mu m. Control of the ASIC's image acquisition and analogue readout is via a command based interface. FPGA based electronic boards, controlling ASIC operation, image digitisation and 10 GE data transmission interface AGIPD detectors to DAQ and control systems.An AGIPD 1 Mpixel detector has been installed at the SPB-1 experimental station in August 2017, while a second one is currently commissioned for the MID (2)endstation. A larger (4 Mpixel) AGIPD detector and one to employ Hi-Z sensor material to efficiently register photons up to E-gamma approximate to 25 keV are currently under construction.