The European XFEL Project

The European XFEL project is a 4th generation photon source to be built in Hamburg. Electron bunches, accelerated to 17.5GeV by the XFEL linac, are distributed to three long SASE undulators. There photon pulses with full lateral coherence and wavelengths between 0.1nm and 4.9nm (12.4 keV and 0.8 keV) are generated for three beamlines. It will deliver around 1012photons within each 100 fs pulse, reaching a peak brilliance of 1033photonss−1mm−2mrad−2(0.1%BW)−1. Thus it will offer unprecedented possibilities in photon science research including nano-object imaging and studies (e.g. by coherent X-ray scattering) and ultra fast dynamic analysis of plasma and chemical reactions (e.g. by X-ray photo correlation spectroscopy). The detector requirements for such studies are extremely challenging: position sensitive area detectors have to provide a dynamic range of ≥ 104, with single-photon sensitivity, while withstanding radiation doses up to 1GGy (TID). Furthermore the detectors have to record data from trains of up to 3000 photon pulses, delivered at 5 MHz, which repeat every 100 ms. Three consortia have picked up the challenge to build pixel detectors for the European XFEL DEPFET-APS, AGIPD1 and LPD. Besides the European XFEL source and the related experimental techniques, the concepts and specialities of the DEPFET-APS, AGIPD and LPD detectors are discussed.