FlashCam: a fully digital camera for the Cherenkov telescope array medium-sized telescopes

FlashCam is an innovative camera designed for the focal plane instrumentation of Cherenkov telescopes. The concept of the FlashCam trigger and readout system is based on the continuous digitization and digital processing of the photo detector signals on FPGAs, and on a high performance, Ethernet-based front-end readout. Because of the modular design, the electronics that have been developed can serve either photomultiplier tubes or silicon-based photon detectors. In the framework of the CTA (Cherenkov telescope array) project, the FlashCam team has developed a PMT-based camera that is suitable for the medium-sized telescopes. With over 100 Cherenkov telescopes, the CTA observatory will run the most sensitive ground-based telescope systems for TeV gamma-ray astronomy when the two arrays in the Northern and Southern Hemisphere (with three different telescope sizes) will go into operation in the upcoming years.