FAST PC-BASED DATA-ACQUISITION SYSTEM FOR GAS-TILLED POSITION-SENSITIVE DETECTORS

The high flux of the new generation of synchrotron radiation sources r equires fast position sensitive detectors with high count rate data ac quisition systems capability. Though the local count rare in a gas-fil led position-sensitive detector is limited by the space charge effect, the integral rate will increase with the area of the detector. Thus, more than several 10(6) events per second can be achieved. Therefore, we developed a new PC-based histogramming and control interface (HCl) with an intrinsic dead lime lower than 200 ns for linear and area X-ra y detectors for time-resolved measurement applications. An overview of the complete acquisition system including a fast lime-to-digital conv erter and image processing software will be given. The design principl es and operating characteristics including experimental results obtain ed with a 100 mm linear delay-line detector at the SAXS beamline 5.2 i n Elettra (Trieste) will be presented.