The Rapid2 X-ray detection system

A second generation of the Rapid readout electronics has been designed, built and commissioned at Daresbury Laboratory. The first application is for a 1D small- and wide-angle scattering X-ray detection system on the new multipole wiggler 6.2 beam-line at the SRS. The ADC per channel system interpolates and yields typically 32 pixels per channel. The wide-angle detector uses 128 channels of electronics to produce 4096 pixels with a FWHM of four pixels, i.e. demonstrates an ability to resolve 1024 peaks across the detector. This corresponds to an FWHM of 400 mum over a 384 mm long (60degrees) curved detector. A second group of 128 channels instrument the 200-mm-radius quadrant detector for simultaneous small-angle scattering measurements. System rate of over 2 x 10(7) events/s for each detector is predicted. A description of the new pipelined digital processing of detected events is given, together with initial beam-line test results. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.