Quantifying the Effect of Cosmic Ray Showers on the X‑IFU Energy Resolution

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Peille2020_Article_QuantifyingTheEffectOfCosmicRa.pdf (1.09 MB)

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https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10909-019-02330-3

Permanent Link

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-019-02330-3
 http://hdl.handle.net/11603/24041

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UMBC Center for Space Sciences and Technology (CSST) / Center for Research and Exploration in Space Sciences & Technology II (CRSST II)
UMBC Faculty Collection
UMBC Physics Department

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0622-5174

Date

2020-02-01

Type of Work

journal articles
Text

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Program

Citation of Original Publication

Peille, P., den Hartog, R., Miniussi, A. et al. Quantifying the Effect of Cosmic Ray Showers on the X-IFU Energy Resolution. J Low Temp Phys 199, 240–249 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-019-02330-3

Rights

This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.
Public Domain Mark 1.0

Subjects

Abstract

The X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU) will operate an array of more than 3000 Transition Edge Sensor pixels at 90 mK with an unprecedented energy resolution of 2.5 eV at 7 keV. In space, primary cosmic rays and secondary particles produced in the instrument structure will continuously deposit energy on the detector wafer and induce fuctuations on the pixels’ thermal bath. We have investigated through simulations of the X-IFU readout chain how these fuctuations eventually infuence the energy measurement of X-ray photons. Realistic timelines of thermal bath fuc tuations at diferent positions in the array are generated as a function of a thermal model and the expected distribution of the deposited energy of the charged particles. These are then used to model the TES response to these thermal perturbations and their infuence on the onboard energy reconstruction process. Overall, we show that with adequate heatsinking, the main energy resolution degradation efect remains minimal and within the associated resolution allocation of 0.2 eV. We further study how a dedicated triggering algorithm could be put in place to fag the rarer large thermal events.