ABSTRACT High-resolution X-ray spectrometers onboard suborbital sounding rockets can search for dark matter candidates that produce X-ray lines, such as decaying keV-scale sterile neutrinos. Even ...with exposure times and effective areas far smaller than XMM-Newton and Chandra observations, high-resolution, wide field of view observations with sounding rockets have competitive sensitivity to decaying sterile neutrinos. We analyze a subset of the 2011 observation by the X-ray Quantum Calorimeter instrument centered on Galactic coordinates with an effective exposure of 106 s, obtaining a limit on the sterile neutrino mixing angle of at 95% CL for a 7 keV neutrino. Better sensitivity at the level of at 95% CL for a 7 keV neutrino is achievable with future 300-s observations of the galactic center by the Micro-X instrument, providing a definitive test of the sterile neutrino interpretation of the reported 3.56 keV excess from galaxy clusters.
The X-ray Astronomy Recovery Mission (XARM) is a recovery mission of ASTRO-H/
Hitomi
, which is expected to be launched in Japanese Fiscal Year of 2020 at the earliest. The
Resolve
instrument on XARM ...consists of an array of 6 × 6 silicon-thermistor microcalorimeters cooled down to 50 mK and a high-throughput X-ray mirror assembly with the focal length of 5.6 m.
Hitomi
was launched into orbit in February 2016 and observed several celestial objects, although the operation of
Hitomi
was terminated in April 2016. The soft X-ray spectrometer (SXS) on Hitomi demonstrated high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy of ~ 5 eV FWHM in orbit for most of the pixels. The
Resolve
instrument is planned to mostly be a copy of the Hitomi SXS and soft X-ray telescope designs, though several changes are planned based on the lessons learned from
Hitomi
. We report a brief summary of the SXS performance and the status of the Resolve instrument.
By implementing a large-area, gain-stabilized microcalorimeter array on an electron beam ion trap, the electron-impact excitation cross sections for the dominant x-ray lines in the Fe XVII spectrum ...have been measured as a function of electron energy establishing a benchmark for atomic calculations. The results show that the calculations consistently predict the cross section of the resonance line to be significantly larger than measured. The lower cross section accounts for several problems found when modeling solar and astrophysical Fe XVII spectra.
We present a high-resolution spectrum of the diffuse X-ray background from 0.1 to 1 keV for a ~1 sr region of the sky centered at l = 90degrees, b = +60degrees using a 36 pixel array of ...microcalorimeters flown on a sounding rocket. With an energy resolution of 11 eV FWHM below 1 keV, the spectrum's observed line ratios help separate charge exchange contributions originating within the heliosphere from thermal emission of hot gas in the interstellar medium. The X-ray sensitivity below 1 keV was reduced by about a factor of four from contamination that occurred early in the flight, limiting the significance of the results. An experimental gold coating on the silicon substrate of the array greatly reduced extraneous signals induced on nearby pixels from cosmic rays passing through the substrate, reducing the triggered event rate by a factor of 15 from a previous flight of the instrument.
Design and calibration of the 34 GHz Yale microwave cavity experiment Slocum, P.L.; Baker, O.K.; Hirshfield, J.L. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
01/2015, Volume:
770
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Several proposed models of the cold dark matter in the universe include light neutral bosons with sub-eV masses. In many cases their detection hinges on their infrequent interactions with Standard ...Model photons at sub-eV energies. We describe the design and performance of an experiment to search for aberrations from the broadband noise power associated with a 5 K copper resonant cavity in the vicinity of 34 GHz (0.1 meV). The cavity, microwave receiver, and data reduction are described. Several configurations of the experiment are discussed in terms of their impact on the sensitivity of the search for axion-like particles and hidden sector photons.
The QUEST Large Area CCD Camera Baltay, C.; Rabinowitz, D.; Andrews, P. ...
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
11/2007, Volume:
119, Issue:
861
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We have designed, constructed, and put into operation a very large area CCD camera that covers the field of view of the 1.2 m Samuel Oschin Schmidt Telescope at the Palomar Observatory. The camera ...consists of 112 CCDs arranged in a mosaic of four rows with 28 CCDs each. The CCDs are
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pixel Sarnoff thinned, back‐illuminated devices with
\documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackageOT2,OT1{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape $13\,\mu \mathrm{m}\,\times 13\,\mu \mathrm{m}\,$ \end{document}
pixels. The camera covers an area of
\documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackageOT2,OT1{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape $4.6^{\circ }\times 3.6^{\circ }$ \end{document}
on the sky with an active area of 9.6 deg2. This camera has been installed at the prime focus of the telescope and commissioned, and scientific‐quality observations on the Palomar‐QUEST Variability Sky Survey were started in 2003 September. The design considerations, construction features, and performance parameters of this camera are described in this paper.
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