A 50 mK test bench for demonstration of the readout chain of Athena/X-IFU

Florent Castellani; Sophie Beaumont; François Pajot; Gilles Roudil; Joseph Adams; Simon Bandler; James Chervenak; Christophe Daniel; Edward V Denison; W Bertrand Doriese; Michel Dupieux; Malcolm Durkin; Hervé Geoffray; Gene C Hilton; David Murat; Yann Parot; Philippe Peille; Damien Prêle; Laurent Ravera; Carl D Reintsema; Kazuhiro Sakai; Robert W Stevens; Joel N Ullom; Leila R Vale; Nicholas Wakeham

arXiv · 2209.04151

A 50 mK test bench for demonstration of the readout chain of Athena/X-IFU

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Abstract

The X-IFU (X-ray Integral Field Unit) onboard the large ESA mission Athena (Advanced Telescope for High ENergy Astrophysics), planned to be launched in the mid 2030s, will be a cryogenic X-ray imaging spectrometer operating at 55 mK. It will provide unprecedented spatially resolved high-resolution spectroscopy (2.5 eV FWHM up to 7 keV) in the 0.2-12 keV energy range thanks to its array of TES (Transition Edge Sensors) microcalorimeters of more than 2k pixel. The detection chain of the instrument is developed by an international collaboration: the detector array by NASA/GSFC, the cold electronics by NIST, the cold amplifier by VTT, the WFEE (Warm Front-End Electronics) by APC, the DRE (Digital Readout Electronics) by IRAP and a focal plane assembly by SRON. To assess the operation of the complete readout chain of the X-IFU, a 50 mK test bench based on a kilo-pixel array of microcalorimeters from NASA/GSFC has been developed at IRAP in collaboration with CNES. Validation of the test bench has been performed with an intermediate detection chain entirely from NIST and Goddard. Next planned activities include the integration of DRE and WFEE prototypes in order to perform an end-to-end demonstration of a complete X-IFU detection chain.

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Florent Castellani, Sophie Beaumont, François Pajot, Gilles Roudil, Joseph Adams, Simon Bandler, James Chervenak, Christophe Daniel, Edward V Denison, W Bertrand Doriese, Michel Dupieux, Malcolm Durkin, Hervé Geoffray, Gene C Hilton, David Murat, Yann Parot, Philippe Peille, Damien Prêle, Laurent Ravera, Carl D Reintsema, Kazuhiro Sakai, Robert W Stevens, Joel N Ullom, Leila R Vale, Nicholas Wakeham. 2022-09-09. A 50 mK test bench for demonstration of the readout chain of Athena/X-IFU. https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.04151

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