Arrays of low-temperature microcalorimeters provide a promising technology for X-ray astrophysics: the imaging spectrometer. A camera with at least several thousand pixels, each of which has an energy-resolving power (E/ΔE\urssFWHM) of a few thousand across a broad energy range (200~eV to 10~keV or higher), would be a revolutionary instrument for the study of energetic astrophysical objects and phenomena. Signal readout is a critical enabling technology. Multiplexed readout, in which signals from multiple pixels are combined into a single amplifier channel, allows a kilo pixel-scale microcalorimeter array to meet the stringent requirements for power consumption, mass, volume, and cooling capacity in orbit. This chapter describes three different multiplexed-readout technologies for transition-edge-sensor microcalorimeters: time-division multiplexing, frequency-domain multiplexing, and microwave-SQUID multiplexing. For each multiplexing technique, we present the basic method, discuss some design considerations and parameters, and show the state of the art. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of future prospects.
@article{arxiv.2209.05621,
title = {Signal readout for Transition-Edge Sensor X-ray imaging spectrometers},
author = {H. Akamatsu and W. B. Doriese and J. A. B. Mates and B. D. Jackson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.05621},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
50 pages, 23 figures. This Chapter will appear in the Section "Detectors for X-ray Astrophysics" (Section Editors: J-W. den Harder, M. Feroci, N. Meidinger) of the "Handbook of X-ray and Gamma-ray Astrophysics" (Editors in chief: C. Bambi and A. Santangelo)