FlashCam: a fully-digital camera for the medium-sized telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array
astro-ph.IM
/ Authors
G. Pühlhofer, C. Bauer, S. Bernhard, M. Capasso, S. Diebold, F. Eisenkolb, D. Florin, C. Föhr, S. Funk, A. Gadola
and 24 more authors
F. Garrecht, G. Hermann, I. Jung, O. Kalekin, C. Kalkuhl, J. Kasperek, T. Kihm, R. Lahmann, A. Manalaysay, A. Marszalek, M. Pfeifer, P. J. Rajda, O. Reimer, A. Santangelo, T. Schanz, T. Schwab, S. Steiner, U. Straumann, C. Tenzer, A. Vollhardt, Q. Weitzel, F. Werner, D. Wolf, K. Zietara
/ Abstract
The FlashCam group is currently preparing photomultiplier-tube based cameras proposed for the medium-sized telescopes (MST) of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). The cameras are designed around the FlashCam readout concept which is the first fully-digital readout system for Cherenkov cameras, based on commercial FADCs and FPGAs as key components for the front-end electronics modules and a high performance camera server as back-end. This contribution describes the progress of the full-scale FlashCam camera prototype currently under construction, as well as performance results also obtained with earlier demonstrator setups. Plans towards the production and implementation of FlashCams on site are also briefly presented.