Performance of the EIGER single photon counting detector

EIGER is a single photon counting hybrid pixel detector being developed at Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Switzerland, for applications at synchrotron light sources in an energy range from a few to 25 keV. EIGER is characterized by a small pixel size (75 x 75 mu m(2)), a frame rate up to 22 kHz and a small dead time between frames (4 mu s). An EIGER module is a hybrid detector composed of a approximate to 8 x 4 cm(2) monolithic silicon sensor bump bonded to 4 x 2 readout chips, for a total of 500 kpixels. Each pixel has a configurable depth (up to 12 bits) counter and records the number of photons impinging. Custom designed module electronics reads out the bits in the pixel counter and processes the data in the module before transferring them to a PC. A large dynamic range (32 bits) for the pixel counter can be obtained through on-board image summation. Rate corrections can be applied on-board to compensate for inefficiencies when the pixel counting rates approach pile-up levels around a million counts per second. The EIGER modules are the building blocks of large area detectors: a 1.5 and a 9 Mpixel systems are under development for the cSAXS beamline at the Swiss Light Source (SLS) at PSI. The very high frame rate capabilities are equally fast for multi-module systems due to the fully parallel data processing. The module calibration will be discussed, with emphasis on the choice of the optimal operation settings as a function of photon energy. The performance regarding threshold dispersion and minimum achievable threshold will be presented. In addition, the progress towards the production of larger multi-module systems will be discussed.