Data acquisition system for a newly-built hard x-ray/soft gamma-ray spectrometer imaging system on experimental advanced superconducting tokamak

A portable hard X-ray and soft gamma-ray spectrometer imaging system (HXS) has been constructed to gather physical information about fast electrons confined in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST). The system is installed on the low field side of the mid-plane and provides a viewing field tangential to the toroidal field. The system utilizes a two-dimensional Cadmium Zinc Telluride (CdZnTe) semiconductor detector with 128 channels, and a data acquisition (DAQ) system has been designed for it. The DAQ system features a highly integrated signal processing system with the capability of high-speed processing and digital transmission of signals from 128 channels. In addition, a related DAQ software has been developed using a modular design approach, facilitating tasks such as data reception, storage, and preliminary processing. HXS, which has been applied during the recent EAST campaign, directly obtains the digital energy spectrum of incident photons. The DAQ system is described in detail in this paper. The hardware components and energy calibration have also been described. Experimental data have been successfully obtained and briefly discussed. More physical research will be reported in future publications.