The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a future gamma-ray observatory that is planned to significantly improve upon the sensitivity and precision of the current generation of Cherenkov telescopes. ...The observatory will consist of several dozens of telescopes with different sizes and equipped with different types of cameras. Of these, the FlashCam camera system is the first to implement a fully digital signal processing chain which allows for a traceable, configurable trigger scheme and flexible signal reconstruction. As of autumn 2016, a prototype FlashCam camera for the medium-sized telescopes of CTA nears completion. First results of the ongoing system tests demonstrate that the signal chain and the readout system surpass CTA requirements. The stability of the system is shown using long-term temperature cycling.
•A full-scale prototype of the FlashCam Cherenkov camera is in operation.•System level testing and characterisation in a dark room is ongoing.•The performances of the data acquisition and the signal chain have been verified.•The system is stable over long periods and robust against temperature variations.
After the shutdown of the Hubble Space Telescope in a few years, new astronomical missions for the ultraviolet (UV) wavelength range between 91 and 300 nm with improved optics and detectors will be ...necessary. This fact drives our development of solar blind photon counting microchannel plate (MCP) UV detectors with high quantum efficiency, high spatial resolution, and low power readout electronics. We plan to use a cross-strip anode (XSA), which has a high spatial resolution and additionally allows a low gain operation of the MCPs which leads to an increased lifetime of the MCPs compared to detectors with other anode types. The main difficulty in implementing an XSA in a detector for space applications is the need for a (pre-) amplifier, a shaper, and an ADC for each of the strips, which means large power consumption and spatial requirements. The solution we are studying is the application of the so-called Beetle chip. This allows for an implementation of a readout electronics for an XSA with a power consumption of less then 10 W. For the tests of our readout electronics prototype, and for the burn-in of the MCPs, we recently finished a setup in a vacuum chamber that is similar to the configuration in the final detector. We present a brief overview of our detector design and details of the readout electronics setup as well as details of the setup in our vacuum chamber.
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be the next generation ground-based observatory for cosmic gamma rays. The FlashCam camera for its mid-size telescope introduces a new concept, with a modest ...sampling rate of 250 MS/s, that enables a continuous digitization as well as event buffering and trigger processing using the same front-end FPGAs. The high performance Ethernet-based readout provides a dead-time free operation for event rates up to 30 kHz corresponding to a data rate of 2.0 GByte/s sent to the camera server. We present the camera design and the current status of the project.
Trigger performance verification of the FlashCam prototype camera Sailer, S.; Werner, F.; Hermann, G. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
08/2019, Letnik:
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FlashCam is a camera proposed for the medium-sized telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). We compare camera trigger rates obtained from measurements with the camera prototype in the ...laboratory and Monte Carlo simulations, when scanning the parameter space of the fully-digital trigger logic and the intensity of a continuous light source mimicking the night sky background (NSB) during on-site operation. The comparisons of the measured data results to the Monte Carlo simulations are used to verify the FlashCam trigger logic and the expected trigger performance.
The main instrument of the WSO-UV satellite covers the wavelength range of 102-176 nm and 174-310 nm with two high resolution echelle spectrographs. The essential requirements for the associated ...detectors are high quantum efficiency, solar blindness, and single photon detection. To achieve this, we are developing microchannel plate (MCP) detectors in sealed tubes. It is planned to use cesium activated gallium nitride as semitransparent photocathode, a stack of two microchannel plates in chevron configuration, and a 33 mm × 44 mm cross strip anode with 64 horizontal and 64 vertical electrodes. This type of anode requires a lower gain of the MCPs ( ≈ 10 6 ) compared to other types of anodes. Therefore, it extends the expected lifetime of the detectors to about five to ten years. The challenge for the use of a cross strip anode onboard the WSO-UV satellite is the combination of contradictory constraints on the readout electronics: On the one hand it should be able to handle a maximum count rate of 3·10 5 s -1 with a spatial resolution better than 15 μm . On the other hand the power consumption is limited to about 8 W. One feasible solution is the so-called Beetle chip. This chip provides 128 input channels with charge-sensitive preamplifiers and shapers. It stores the sampled data temporarily in a ring buffer and multiplexes it to four analogue readout channels. The output is then digitized by four ADCs and processed in a radiation hard FPGA, which also contains the space-wire interface to the satellite bus.
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