Search results for "superconducting absorbers"
showing 2 items of 2 documents
Spectral broadening by quasiparticle pile-up in X-ray microcalorimeters with superconducting absorbers
2004
Long-living quasiparticles can pile-up in a superconducting absorber of an X-ray microcalorimeter when photons are detected at high count rate. These quasiparticles can give a non-negligible contribution to the total heat capacity of the detector thus affecting the pulse height spectrum of detected photons. We investigated this effect with numerical simulations and evaluated the resulting spectral broadening as a function of the photon absorption rate, and the heat capacity of the detector for a NTD germanium microcalorimeter with pure Sn absorber.
Experimental evidence of an incomplete thermalization of the energy in an x-ray microcalorimeter with a TaAu absorber.
2008
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…