Jul 22 – 26, 2019
Milano
Europe/Rome timezone

TES pixel optimization for the ATHENA X-IFU instrument

Jul 22, 2019, 11:25 AM
15m
Auditorium G. Testori (Milano)

Auditorium G. Testori

Milano

Piazza Città di Lombardia, 1, 20124 Milano MI
Oral Presentation Low Temperature Detector Development and Physics Orals LM 001

Speaker

Dr Nicholas, A. Wakeham (NASA-GSFC / UMBC)

Description

The Advanced Telescope for High ENergy Astrophysics (ATHENA) will include the X-ray Integral Field Unit instrument (X-IFU). This instrument is baselined with an array of 3,168 transition-edge sensor (TES) pixels made with Mo/Au bilayers that will be AC biased and Frequency-Division Mutliplexed (FDM). Over the last few years, there has been intense effort at NASA/GSFC and SRON to better understand and optimize the pixel design to meet the requirements of X-IFU. This has included investigation of the effect of TES design on transition shape and uniformity, noise, eddy-current losses, AC Josephson effects, and spectral resolution over a broad range of incident energy. Through this understanding we have been able to achieve ground-breaking performance under AC bias. In this presentation, we will discuss the important physical effects in the TES, and describe how they are driving the choice of TES parameters (size, aspect ratio, thermal conductance, resistance, heat capacity etc.) that are being considered for X-IFU. We will also discuss the latest measurements of NASA TES devices and how they are further improving our understanding of the relevant physics in the TES. This will include our advances in modeling the TES as multiple thermal bodies, and how the design of X-ray absorber attachments may influence TES performance.

Student (Ph.D., M.Sc. or B.Sc.) N
Less than 5 years of experience since completion of Ph.D N

Primary authors

Dr Nicholas, A. Wakeham (NASA-GSFC / UMBC) Dr Joseph S. Adams (NASA-GSFC / UMBC) Hiroki Akamatsu (Netherlands Institute for Space Research) Dr Simon, R. Bandler (NASA-GSFC) Sophie Beaumont (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / UMBC) Meng-Ping Chang (NASA GSFC / SSAI) Dr James, A. Chervenak Aaron Datesman (NASA Goddard space flight center / Science Systems and Applications, Inc.) Megan Eckart (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) Dr Fred, M. Finkbeiner (NASA-GSFC / Sigma Space Corp.) Luciano Gottardi (SRON - Netherlands Institute for Space Research) Jong Yoon Ha (NASA GSFC/ SB Microsystems) Dr Ruslan Hummatov (NASA-GSFC / UMBC) Brian Jackson (Netherlands Institute for Space Research) Dr Richard, L Kelley (NASA-GSFC) Dr Caroline Kilbourne (NASA-GSFC) Jan van der Kuur (Netherlands Institute for Space Research) Dr Antoine, R Miniussi (NASA/GSFC - UMBC) Dr Frederick, S. Porter (NASA-GSFC) Dr John, E. Sadleir (NASA-GSFC) Kazuhiro Sakai (NASA/GSFC) Stephen Smith (NASA GSFC / UMBC) Dr Edward, J. Wassell (NASA-GSFC / SSAI)

Presentation materials