Related papers: The Practice of Pulse Processing
We present a method using principal component analysis (PCA) to process x-ray pulses with severe shape variation where traditional optimal filter methods fail. We demonstrate that PCA is able to noise-filter and extract energy information…
Transition edge sensor microcalorimeters can measure x-ray and gamma-ray energies with very high energy resolution and high photon-collection efficiency. For this technology to reach its full potential in future x-ray observatories, each…
The so-called "optimal filter" analysis of a microcalorimeter's x-ray pulses is statistically optimal only if all pulses have the same shape, regardless of energy. The shapes of pulses from a nonlinear detector can and do depend on the…
Here we present a general algorithm for processing microcalorimeter data with special applicability to data with high photon count rates. Conventional optimal filtering, which has become ubiquitous in microcalorimeter data processing,…
For a high source activity experiment, such as HOLMES, non-constant baseline pulses could constitute a great fraction of the data-set. We test the optimal filter matrix technique, proposed to process these pulses, on simulated responses of…
We introduce a filter-construction method for pulse processing that differs in two respects from that in standard optimal filtering, in which the average pulse shape and noise-power spectral density are combined to create a convolution…
The X-ray integral field unit for the Athena mission consists of a microcalorimeter transition edge sensor pixel array. Incoming photons generate pulses which are analyzed in terms of energy, in order to assemble the X-ray spectrum. Usually…
A principal component analysis (PCA) of clean microcalorimeter pulse records can be a first step beyond statistically optimal linear filtering of pulses towards a fully non-linear analysis. For PCA to be practical on spectrometers with…
We consider how to analyze microcalorimeter pulses for quantities that are nonlinear in the data, while preserving the signal-to-noise advantages of lin- ear optimal filtering. We successfully apply our chosen approach to compute the…
The pulsations of X-ray pulsars carry information about the accretion and magnetic field geometry. Here we present a study and classification of energy resolved pulse profiles of a sample of X-ray pulsars, focusing on high-mass X-ray…
A formalism for treating the pile-up produced in solid-state detectors by laser-driven pulsed x-ray sources has been developed. It allows the direct use of x-ray spectroscopy without artificially decreasing the number of counts in the…
The nonlinear energy response of cryogenic microcalorimeters is usually corrected through an empirical calibration. X-ray or gamma-ray emission lines of known shape and energy anchor a smooth function that generalizes the calibration data…
The spectroscopic performance of an X-ray microcalorimeter is compromised at high count rates. In this study, we utilize the Resolve X-ray microcalorimeter onboard the XRISM satellite to examine the effects observed during high count rate…
The detection of irregularly spaced pulses of non-negligible width is a fascinating yet under-explored topic in signal processing. It sits adjacent to other core topics such as radar and symbol detection yet has its own distinctive…
This paper presents a practical approach to digital pulse processing, emphasizing simplicity and efficiency. We advocate for a balanced software design, flat data structures, the use of the ROOT C++ interpreter, and a combination of…
For pulsar projects it is often necessary to predict the pulse phase in advance, for example, when preparing for new observations. Interpolation of the pulse phase between existing measurements is also often required, for example, when…
X-ray spectroscopy is a powerful technique for the analysis of the energy distribution of X-rays from astrophysical sources. It allows for the study of the properties, composition, and physical processes taking place at the site of…
The spectrum of laser-plasma generated X-rays is very important, it characterizes electron dynamics in plasma and is basic for applications. However, the accuracies and efficiencies of existing methods to diagnose the spectrum of…
Pulsar data analysis pipelines have historically been comprised of bespoke software systems, supporting the off-line analysis of data. However modern data acquisition systems are making off-line analyses impractical. They often output…
We present a template-free method of estimating pulse height of micro-calorimeter signals based on principal component analysis (PCA). The method is shown to improve the resolution on a simulated dataset by 25\% compared to the standard…