Which detector settings should I choose?

The choice of the operation settings is very important in order to obtain good quality data.
Normally slower settings will reduce the electronics noise and therefore it is possible to work at lower energies, but will saturate for high photon fluxes.
On the other hand, faster settings will allow to work with higher photon intensities without pileup, but not to access lower energies because of an higher electronics noise.
Therefore it is extremely important to chose adequate settings for the detector depending on the X-ray energy and expected maximum count rate. In the following is a description of the energy and intensity range coverd by the different settings for each detector.

MYTHEN

Normally the user can follow these rules:

1. If the X-ray energy is lower than 8 keV the High gain setting should be used. Since it is a slow mode of operation it is necessary to take care that the maximum count rate is lower than 100 kcounts/s for all channels (use filters to reduce the beam intensisty).
2. For energies higher than 8 keV, the Standard setting is normally fine if the count rate can be kept lower than 300 kcounts/s for all channels (use filters to reduce the beam intensisty).

3. In case a larger count rate is required in order to keep the acquisition time shorter, the Fast setting must be selected. However the maximum count rate should never exceed 1 Mcounts/s for all channels.

Figure 3.1: Plot indicating the reccomended choice of detector settings as a function of the X-ray energy and maximum count rate per channel..