Report on future detector requirements at ESRF

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Purpose of the study
The ESRF is the European centre for synchrotron radiation based X-ray research (one of three
high energy synchrotron sources operational worldwide).
In 2009, a ten-year Upgrade Programme was initiated in order to maintain the success of the
facility and to offer new scientific and technical opportunities to the users. In the frame of this
programme, a large effort is planned to make improvements to the X-ray detection systems.
The purpose of this study is to compile information on the present situation and the expected
needs in terms of X-ray detection for all the ESRF beamlines in the next 10 years. The aim is
not to evaluate the various potential technologies but to describe the beamline needs with
references, when appropriate, to existing technologies or foreseen technical developments.
This report mainly constitutes a working tool which aims at helping future decisions by
summarising all the cases in a single document with a level of information as homogeneous as
possible.
Limitations of the study
This document tries to be as complete as possible but is obviously non-exhaustive. It is a
picture of the future detection needs of beamlines as they can be imagined at the moment the
report is written. The information is expected to change as the beamline instrumentation and
scientific applications evolve.
Only photon detectors are concerned by this study and therefore electron or spin detection
have not been considered. Incident beam intensity and position monitors are not taken into
account either.
Finally, other limitations have to be underlined. This document results from the interaction
between the beamlines and the detector group and presents the view of the detectors by
combining both points of view; it also tries to provide a level of detail that is as homogeneous
as possible for all the applications. In practice, it turned out to be impossible to gather
complete information for all the cases due a series of circumstances such as the variable level
of maturity of the foreseen techniques or uncertainties in the way some experiments will be
implemented, for instance. Consequently, some parts of the report are much more detailed and
quantitative than others, which merely provide a qualitative description of certain detector
characteristics.
First observations
Collected needs have been grouped in sections called “detector cases”, as it is explained in the
next section, “Applied methodology”.
32 detector cases have been identified and described: 5 point detector cases, 25 position
sensitive detector cases and 2 energy dispersive detector cases. These descriptions are
expected to evolve with the technical possibilities and the scientific needs. Nevertheless,
several directions can be outlined.
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