Fast signal processing of a yttrium-aluminum-perovskite : Ce detector for synchrotron x-ray experiments

An amplifier has been developed to form narrow pulses of less than 100 ns f or a YAP:Ce scintillator, which appears promising as a detector for high-co unting rate x-ray measurements. The performance of the detector system has been evaluated with monochromatic 8, 16.5, and 25 keV synchrotron x-ray pho tons at the Photon Factory. The whole deadtime obtained was 84 ns, which is around 3.5 times the decay time of the scintillation (25 ns), indicating t hat the present system is almost optimum. It has been found that the counti ng loss for 1 M counts/s is only 8%-9%, and that the detector can count ext remely strong photons up to 5 M counts/s. (C) 2001 American Institute of Ph ysics.