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Title: Optimal Pulse Processing, Pile-Up Decomposition, and Applications of Silicon Drift Detectors at LCLS

Journal Article · · IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science
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  1. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
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Silicon drift detectors (SDDs) revolutionized spectroscopy in fields as diverse as geology and dentistry. For a subset of experiments at ultrafast, X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs), SDDs can make substantial contributions. Often the unknown spectrum is interesting, carrying science data, or the background measurement is useful to identify unexpected signals. Many measurements involve only several discrete photon energies known a priori, allowing single-event decomposition of pile-up and spectroscopic photon counting. We designed a pulse function and demonstrated that the signal amplitude (i.e., proportional to the detected energy and obtained from fitting with the pulse function), rise time, and pulse height are interrelated, and at short peaking times, the pulse height and pulse area are not optimal estimators for detected energy; instead, the signal amplitude and rise time are obtained for each pulse by fitting, thus removing the need for pulse shaping. By avoiding pulse shaping, rise times of tens of nanoseconds resulted in reduced pulse pile-up and allowed decomposition of remaining pulse pile-up at photon separation times down to hundreds of nanoseconds while yielding time-of-arrival information with the precision of 10 ns. Waveform fitting yields simultaneously high energy resolution and high counting rates (two orders of magnitude higher than current digital pulse processors). At pulsed sources or high photon rates, photon pile-up still occurs. We showed that pile-up spectrum fitting is relatively simple and preferable to pile-up spectrum deconvolution. We then developed a photon pile-up statistical model for constant intensity sources, extended it to variable intensity sources (typical for FELs), and used it to fit a complex pileup spectrum. We subsequently developed a Bayesian pile-up decomposition method that allows decomposing pile-up of single events with up to six photons from six monochromatic lines with 99% accuracy. The usefulness of SDDs will continue into the X-ray FEL era of science. Their successors, the ePixS hybrid pixel detectors, already offer hundreds of pixels, each with a similar performance to an SDD, in a compact, robust and affordable package.

Research Organization:
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States). . Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-76SF00515
OSTI ID:
1437883
Journal Information:
IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, Vol. 64, Issue 11; ISSN 0018-9499
Publisher:
IEEECopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 10 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Related Subjects

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
Silicon drift detectors
free-electron lasers
pulse pile-up
photon pile-up
Bayesian decomposition
x-ray spectroscopy
photon counting
photonics
detectors
pulse shaping methods
iron
x-ray lasers
program processors
shape