Characterisation of the UFXC32k hybrid pixel detector for time-resolved pump-probe diffraction experiments at Synchrotron SOLEIL

The experimental set-up for time-resolved studies of ultra-fast photo-induced structural dynamics at the Synchrotron SOLEIL is based on a general pump-probe scheme that has been developed and implemented on the CRISTAL hard X-ray diffraction beamline [1,2]. In a so-called pump-probe cycle, the sample is excited with an ultra-short laser pulse of ≈40 fs duration (the pump), and induced changes in its atomic structure are studied by measuring, with a precisely controlled delay, a diffraction pattern from a single pulse of synchrotron radiation (the probe) with a 2-D pixel detector. An improvement to the classical scheme is proposed, where the sample's response is probed at two different delays after each laser excitation. The first measurement at short delays allows studying the photo-induced dynamics. The second one is a reference measurement taken after sample's relaxation, which permits detection of drifts in the experimental conditions (e.g. beam misalignment, sample degradation). A hybrid pixel detector with a very fast readout time, a high dynamic range and extended linearity was tested to achieve the experiment objectives. In this paper, the first results obtained with the UFXC32k single photon counting detector are presented.