1. Energy Calibration of High-Resolution X-Ray TES Microcalorimeters With 3 eV Optical Photons
- Author
-
Megan E. Eckart, Kelsey M. Morgan, Dallas Wulf, Mackenzie Meyer, Jay Chervenak, Felix Jaeckel, Samuel Smith, M. McPheron, C. V. Ambarish, Caroline A. Kilbourne, Edward J. Wassell, Daniel Schmidt, Kazuhiro Sakai, Antoine R. Miniussi, Nicholas A. Wakeham, R. Gruenke, Audrey J. Ewin, Aaron M. Datesman, Joel N. Ullom, N. Christensen, K. L. Nelms, Simon R. Bandler, Yu Zhou, Shuo Zhang, Arunava Roy, D. McCammon, John E. Sadleir, F. M. Finkbeiner, Wonsik Yoon, Joseph S. Adams, F. S. Porter, R. L. Kelley, Daniel S. Swetz, and L. Hu
- Subjects
Physics ,Photon ,Optical fiber ,Physics::Instrumentation and Detectors ,business.industry ,Resolution (electron density) ,Detector ,X-ray detector ,Physics::Optics ,Grating ,Condensed Matter Physics ,01 natural sciences ,Article ,Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials ,law.invention ,Optics ,law ,0103 physical sciences ,Calibration ,Electrical and Electronic Engineering ,Photonics ,010306 general physics ,business - Abstract
With the improving energy resolution of transitionedge sensor (TES) based microcalorimeters, performance verification and calibration of these detectors has become increasingly challenging, especially in the energy range below 1 keV where fluorescent atomic X-ray lines have linewidths that are wider than the detector energy resolution and require impractically high statistics to determine the gain and deconvolve the instrumental profile. Better behaved calibration sources such as grating monochromators are too cumbersome for space missions and are difficult to use in the lab. As an alternative, we are exploring the use of pulses of 3 eV optical photons delivered by an optical fiber to generate combs of known energies with known arrival times. Here, we discuss initial results of this technique obtained with 2 eV and 0.7 eV resolution X-ray microcalorimeters. With the 2 eV detector, we have achieved photon number resolution for pulses with mean photon number up to 133 (corresponding to 0.4 keV).
- Published
- 2019