Similarities and differences of recent hybrid pixel detectors for X-ray and high energy physics developed at the Paul Scherrer Institut

Abstract

Hybrid pixel detectors are being developed for both photon science and high energy physics. The article will cover similarities and differences in pixel detectors for both applications using two of the pixel detectors developed at the Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland) as examples: the EIGER photon counting detector and the psi46dig chip, which has been developed for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) tracking pixel detector upgrade.EIGER is a single photon counting hybrid pixel detector for applications at synchrotron light sources in the energy range from a few to 25 keV. It is characterized by a small pixel size (75 × 75 μm2), high count rate capability (106 counts/pixel/s) and very high data rate, which reaches 6 Gb/s for a 256 × 256 pixel chip. The CMS pixel detector is designed to provide charge information from the pixels in the harsh radiation environment at the Large Hadron Collider. The short time between bunches of 25 ns and the high event rate at luminosity up to 2 × 1034cm−2s−1 require a detector with high hit efficiency, with good timing resolution and the ability to retain timestamp information for the hits. The readout architecture is based on the transfer of hits from the pixels to the periphery, where the trigger validation is performed before data transfer. The data rates of the digitized output reach 160 Mb/s for a 52×80 pixel chip.The specific timing and rate requirements for the detectors, the analog performances (minimum threshold and noise), the power consumption and the radiation hardness will be compared. An overview on future developments based on mutual learning and common solutions will be discussed.