High-throughput X-ray spectroscopy: characterization of the ARDESIA detector with high-end digital pulse processors

Among the many factors that determine data acquisition efficiency in synchrotron radiation experiments, detector throughput is a primary bottleneck. As modern synchrotron sources provide increasingly intense X-ray beams, the signal processing time of individual detector channels often becomes the limiting factor for throughput. State-of-the-art digital pulse processors (DPPs) can mitigate this bottleneck by minimizing the processing time per channel, thereby improving overall event throughput. In this work, we evaluate the performance of the ARDESIA-16 detection system, based on a 16-channel monolithic silicon drift detector array, when coupled with two advanced DPPs - DANTE+ and FalconX - which employ different signal processing architectures. Using a standard 55Fe source, we systematically characterize and compare output count rate, energy resolution, dead time and spectral quality across a broad range of input count rates, from 40 kcps to 2.7 Mcps. Our results demonstrate the excellent performance of ARDESIA-16 with both DPP systems while highlighting a key trade-off between energy resolution and event throughput that requires thorough optimization for high-rate synchrotron applications.