The Athena X-ray Integral Field Unit
Abstract
The X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU) is the high resolution X-ray spectrometer of the ESA Athena X-ray observatory. Over a field of view of 5' equivalent diameter, it will deliver X-ray spectra from 0.2 to 12 keV with a spectral resolution of 2.5 eV up to 7 keV on ~5 arcsecond pixels. The X-IFU is based on a large format array of super-conducting molybdenum-gold Transition Edge Sensors cooled at about 90 mK, each coupled with an absorber made of gold and bismuth with a pitch of 249 microns. A cryogenic anti-coincidence detector located underneath the prime TES array enables the non X-ray background to be reduced. A bath temperature of about 50 mK is obtained by a series of mechanical coolers combining 15K Pulse Tubes, 4K and 2K Joule-Thomson coolers which pre-cool a sub Kelvin cooler made of a 3He sorption cooler coupled with an Adiabatic Demagnetization Refrigerator. Frequency domain multiplexing enables to read out 40 pixels in one single channel. A photon interacting with an absorber leads to a current pulse, amplified by the readout electronics and whose shape is reconstructed on board to recover its energy with high accuracy. The defocusing capability offered by the Athena movable mirror assembly enables the X-IFU to observe the brightest X-ray sources of the sky (up to Crab-like intensities) by spreading the telescope point spread function over hundreds of pixels. Thus the X-IFU delivers low pile-up, high throughput (>50%), and typically 10 eV spectral resolution at 1 Crab intensities, i.e. a factor of 10 or more better than Silicon based X-ray detectors. In this paper, the current X-IFU baseline is presented, together with an assessment of its anticipated performance in terms of spectral resolution, background, and count rate capability. The X-IFU baseline configuration will be subject to a preliminary requirement review that is scheduled at the end of 2018.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1807.06092,
title = {The Athena X-ray Integral Field Unit},
author = {Didier Barret and Thien Lam Trong and Jan-Willem den Herder and Luigi Piro and Massimo Cappi and Juhani Huovelin and Richard Kelley and J. Miguel Mas-Hesse and Kazuhisa Mitsuda and Stéphane Paltani and Gregor Rauw and Agata Rozanska and Joern Wilms and Simon Bandler and Marco Barbera and Xavier Barcons and Enrico Bozzo and Maria Teresa Ceballos and Ivan Charles and Elisa Costantini and Anne Decourchelle and Roland den Hartog and Lionel Duband and Jean-Marc Duval and Fabrizio Fiore and Flavio Gatti and Andrea Goldwurm and Brian Jackson and Peter Jonker and Caroline Kilbourne and Claudio Macculi and Mariano Mendez and Silvano Molendi and Piotr Orleanski and François Pajot and Etienne Pointecouteau and Frederick Porter and Gabriel W. Pratt and Damien Prêle and Laurent Ravera and Kosuke Sato and Joop Schaye and Keisuke Shinozaki and Tanguy Thibert and Luca Valenziano and Veronique Valette and Jacco Vink and Natalie Webb and Michael Wise and Noriko Yamasaki and Françoise Delcelier-Douchin and Jean-Michel Mesnager and Bernard Pontet and Alice Pradines and Graziella Branduardi-Raymont and Esra Bulbul and Mauro Dadina and Stefano Ettori and Alexis Finoguenov and Yasushi Fukazawa and Agnieszka Janiuk and Jelle Kaastra and Pasquale Mazzotta and Jon Miller and Giovanni Miniutti and Yaël Nazé and Fabrizio Nicastro and Salvatore Sciortino and Aurora Simionescu and Jose Miguel Torrejon and Benoît Frezouls and Hervé Geoffray and Philippe Peille and Corinne Aicardi and Jérôme André and Antoine Clénet and Christophe Daniel and Christophe Etcheverry and Emilie Gloaguen and Gilles Hervet and Antoine Jolly and Aurélien Ledot and Irwin Maussang and Alexis Paillet and Roseline Schmisser and Bruno Vella and Jean-Charles Damery and Kevin Boyce and Michael DiPirro and Simone Lotti and Denis Schwander and Stephen Smith and Bert-Joost van Leeuwen and Henk van Weers and Nicolas Clerc and Beatriz Cobo and Thomas Dauser and Jelle de Plaa and Christian Kirsch and Edoardo Cucchetti and Megan Eckart and Philippe Ferrando and Lorenzo Natalucci},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.06092},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
15 pages, 5 figures, to appear in Proc. SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation, Austin 2018