Ultra-fast data acquisition system for coherent synchrotron radiation based on superconducting terahertz detectors

This paper describes a new real-time and high accuracy data acquisition system suitable for recording of the individual ultra-short pulses generated by a fast terahertz (THz) detector (e.g. YBCO, NbN, Zero Biased Schottky Diode). The system proposed consists of a fast pulse sampling board and a high data throughput readout board. The first board is designed for sampling of the fast pulse signals with a full width half maximum (FWHM) between few tens to hundred picoseconds. For each THz pulse four samples are acquired with a minimum sampling time of 3 ps. The high data throughput board consists of a PCIe - Bus Master DMA architecture used for fast data transfer up to 3 GByte/s. A prototype setup with fast THz detectors and the acquisition system has been successfully tested at the synchrotron ANKA. An overview of the experimental setup and preliminary results with multi-bunch filling pattern will be shown.