0000000001090833
AUTHOR
J. Beeman
XRASE: the X-ray spectroscopic explorer
The X-Ray Spectroscopic Explorer (XRASE) has a unique combination of features that will make it possible to address many of NASA's scientific goals. These include how galaxy clusters form, the physics and chemistry of the ISM, the heating of stellar coronae, the amount and content of intergalactic baryonic matter, the mass of black holes and the formation of disks and jets in AGN and galactic binaries. XRASE has a thin foil, multilayered telescope with a large collecting area up to 10 keV, especially in the Fe Kα region (1100 cm2). Its microcalorimeter array combines high energy resolution (7 eV at 6 keV) and efficiency with a field-of-view of 26 arcmin2. A deep orbit allows for long, conti…
Experimental evidence of an incomplete thermalization of the energy in an x-ray microcalorimeter with a TaAu absorber.
We have conducted an experimental test at our XACT facility using an x-ray microcalorimeter with Ta∕Au absorber and neutron transmutation doped germanium thermal sensor. The test was aimed at measuring the percentage of energy effectively thermalized after absorption of x-ray photons in superconducting tantalum. Moreover, in general, possible formation of long living quasiparticles implies that by using a superconducting absorber, a fraction of the deposited energy could not be thermalized on the useful time scale of the thermal sensor. To investigate this scenario, we exploited an absorber made of gold, where no energy trapping is expected, with a small piece of superconducting tantalum at…