Determination of vibration eigenfrequencies and eigenmodes of transition-edge sensor microcalorimeters for NewAthena X-IFU
Nicholas A. Wakeham (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, University of Maryland Baltimore County)
Henk J. Van Weers (SRON–Netherlands Institute for Space Research)
Maurits J.A. Houmes (TU Delft - Applied Sciences, Kavli institute of nanoscience Delft)
Gabriele Baglioni (Kavli institute of nanoscience Delft, TU Delft - Applied Sciences)
Dejan Davidovikj (Kavli institute of nanoscience Delft, TU Delft - Applied Sciences, Balthazar Labs B.V.)
Johannes P.C. Dercksen (SRON–Netherlands Institute for Space Research)
Makars Šiškins (TU Delft - Mechanical Engineering, Kavli institute of nanoscience Delft)
Peter G. Steeneken (Kavli institute of nanoscience Delft, TU Delft - Mechanical Engineering)
Herre S.J. Van der Zant (TU Delft - Applied Sciences, Kavli institute of nanoscience Delft)
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Abstract
The X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU) is an instrument being developed for the New Advanced Telescope for High ENergy Astrophysics observatory satellite. It utilizes an array of X-ray transition-edge sensor (TES) microcalorimeter pixels, with the instrument designed to achieve an energy resolution of 4 eV at photon energies up to 7 keV. Vibration of individual TES pixels in the array has the potential to degrade this performance predominantly through time-varying thermal dissipation. To mitigate this, in the X-IFU design, the first vibrational eigenfrequency of the TES pixels is required to be greater than 25 kHz. This is to ensure that the first eigenfrequency is significantly larger than the bandwidth of known vibration drivers, such as cryocoolers, and therefore coupling and dissipation in the pixels is negligible. We present theoretical and experimental determination of the eigenfrequencies and eigenmodes of prototype TES pixels designed for X-IFU. We show that the first eigenfrequency is 89 kHz at room temperature and decreases to 86 kHz at 5.6 K.
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