Laboratory astrophysics using an XRS engineering model microcalorimeter

We have recently deployed an XRS (the X-ray Spectrometer on the Astro-E mission) engineering model microcalorimeter at the electron beam ion traps (EBIT I/II) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The EBIT I/II can produce well defined astrophysically interesting plasmas for a wide range of plasma conditions. The XRS engineering model was mated with a 32 element XRS 6×6 microcalorimeter array and integrated into a laboratory cryostat. The system was then transported to the EBIT I/II and operated over the last year. The microcalorimeter array has a composite resolution of 8 eV at 1 keV and 11 eV at 6 keV. During the campaign, we performed a number of high resolution, broad band observations including: K and L shell Fe with single ionization energies from 1–8 keV, Maxwellian distributions of Fe with 〈kT〉=0.5–3 keV, non-equilibrium states of Fe with very fine time resolution for η=109−1012 s cm−3. The total observation time for the campaign was over 10 Ms and the analysis is ongoing. We will present her...