Detection of MeV electrons using a charge integrating hybrid pixel detector

TL;DR

This study evaluates a hybrid pixel detector's ability to detect MeV electrons, analyzing its performance at various energies and comparing experimental results with simulations to understand its capabilities for electron diffraction applications.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates the use of a JUNGFRAU detector, originally for X-ray detection, for MeV electron detection, providing detailed performance metrics and simulation-based extrapolations.

Findings

Detector successfully measures energy deposition and cluster size at 4, 10, and 20 MeV.

Experimental results align well with GEANT4 simulations.

Extrapolation suggests potential for different sensor thicknesses.

Abstract

Electrons are emerging as a strong complement to X-rays for diffraction based studies. In this paper we investigate the performance of a JUNGFRAU detector with 320 um thick silicon sensor at a pulsed electron source. Originally developed for X-ray detection at free electron lasers, JUNGFRAU features a dynamic range of 120 MeV/pixel (implemented with in-pixel gain switching) which translated to about 1200 incident electrons per pixel and frame in the MeV region. We preset basic characteristics such as energy deposited per incident particle, resulting cluster size and spatial resolution along with dynamic (intensity) range scans. Measurements were performed at 4, 10 and 20 MeV/c. We compare the measurements with GEANT4 based simulations and extrapolate the results to different sensor thicknesses using these simulations.