The European XFEL is an extremely brilliant Free Electron Laser Source with a
very demanding pulse structure: trains of 2700 X-Ray pulses are repeated at 10
Hz. The pulses inside the train are spaced by 220 ns and each one contains up
to 1012 photons of 12.4 keV, while being ≤100 fs in length. AGIPD,
the Adaptive Gain Integrating Pixel Detector, is a hybrid pixel detector
developed by DESY, PSI, and the Universities of Bonn and Hamburg to cope with
these properties. It is a fast, low noise integrating detector, with single
photon sensitivity (for Eγ≥6 keV) and a large dynamic
range, up to 104 photons at 12.4 keV. This is achieved with a charge
sensitive amplifier with 3 adaptively selected gains per pixel. 352 images can
be recorded at up to 6.5 MHz and stored in the in-pixel analogue memory and
read out between pulse trains. The core component of this detector is the AGIPD
ASIC, which consists of 64×64 pixels of 200μm×200μm. Control of the ASIC's image acquisition and analogue readout is
via a command based interface. FPGA based electronic boards, controlling ASIC
operation, image digitisation and 10 GE data transmission interface AGIPD
detectors to DAQ and control systems. An AGIPD 1 Mpixel detector has been
installed at the SPB experimental station in August 2017, while a second one is
currently commissioned for the MID endstation. A larger (4 Mpixel) AGIPD
detector and one to employ Hi-Z sensor material to efficiently register photons
up to Eγ≈25 keV are currently under construction.Comment: submitted to the proceedings of the ULITIMA 2018 conference, to be
published in NIM