High-resolution X-ray spectroscopy with Hitomi was expected to resolve the origin of the faint unidentified emission line reported in several low-resolution studies of various massive systems, such ...as galaxies and clusters, including the Perseus cluster. We have analyzed the Hitomi first-light observation of the Perseus cluster. The emission line expected for Perseus based on the XMM-Newton signal from the large cluster sample under the dark matter decay scenario is too faint to be detectable in the Hitomi data. However, the previously reported 3.5 keV flux from Perseus was anomalously high compared to the sample-based prediction. We find no unidentified line at the reported high flux level. Taking into account the XMM measurement uncertainties for this region, the inconsistency with Hitomi is at a 99% significance for a broad dark matter line and at 99.7% for a narrow line from the gas. We do not find anomalously high fluxes of the nearby faint K line or the Ar satellite line that were proposed as explanations for the earlier 3.5 keV detections. We do find a hint of a broad excess near the energies of high-n transitions of S xvi ( rest-frame)-a possible signature of charge exchange in the molecular nebula and another proposed explanation for the unidentified line. While its energy is consistent with XMM pn detections, it is unlikely to explain the MOS signal. A confirmation of this interesting feature has to wait for a more sensitive observation with a future calorimeter experiment.
Microcalorimeters have the potential to provide line shapes well described by a single Gaussian broadening term of few-eV width. This attribute makes the detectors especially well suited for x-ray ...astrophysics observations; however, low-level non-Gaussian broadening terms are expected and must be characterized. These terms depend on the composition of the x-ray absorber, the detailed x-ray absorption physics, the device thermalization processes, and the incident x-ray energy. Here we present the first measurements targeted at understanding the extended line-spread function (LSF) of x-ray microcalorimeter pixels under development for the X-ray Integral Field Unit on the Athena X-ray Observatory. These pixels are composed of Mo/Au transition-edge sensors with overhanging electroplated Au/Bi absorbers. We have measured the line shapes using monochromatic x-ray sources with <; 1-eV width at several x-ray energies (0.85, 0.93, 1.25, 1.5, 5.4 and 8.0 keV) across the instrument bandpass (0.3-12 keV) and have modeled the line profiles. These results are compared to the extended LSF of the Hitomi microcalorimeter pixels that used HgTe absorbers.
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.
We performed small-scale demonstrations at GSFC of high-resolution Xray TES microcalorimeters read out using a microwave SQUID multiplexer. This work is part of our effort to develop detector and ...readout technologies for future space-based X-ray instruments such as the microcalorimeter spectrometer envisaged for Lynx, a large mission concept under development for the Astro 2020 Decadal Survey. In this paper we describe our experiment, including details of a recently designed, microwave-optimized low-temperature setup that is thermally anchored to the 55mKstage of our laboratory ADR. Using aROACH2 FPGA at room temperature, we read out pixels of a GSFC-built detector array via a NIST-built multiplexer chip with Nb coplanar waveguide resonators coupled to rf-SQUIDs. The resonators are spaced 6 MHz apart (at ∼ 5.9 GHz) and have quality factors of ∼ 15,000. In our initial demonstration, we used flux-ramp modulation frequencies of 125 kHz to read out 5 pixels simultaneously and achieved spectral resolutions of 2.8-3.1 eV FWHM at 5.9 keV. Our subsequent work is ongoing: to-date we have achieved a median spectral resolution of 3.4 eV FWHM at 5.9 keV while reading out 28 pixels simultaneously with flux-ramp frequencies of 160 kHz. We present the measured system-level noise and maximum slew rates and briefly describe our future development work.
Context. Observations of magnetic clouds (MCs) are consistent with the presence of flux ropes detected in the solar wind (SW) a few days after their expulsion from the Sun as coronal mass ejections ...(CMEs). Aims. Both the in situ observations of plasma velocity profiles and the increase of their size with solar distance show that MCs are typically expanding structures. The aim of this work is to derive the expansion properties of MCs in the inner heliosphere from 0.3 to 1 AU. Methods. We analyze MCs observed by the two Helios spacecraft using in situ magnetic field and velocity measurements. We split the sample in two subsets: those MCs with a velocity profile that is significantly perturbed from the expected linear profile and those that are not. From the slope of the in situ measured bulk velocity along the Sun-Earth direction, we compute an expansion speed with respect to the cloud center for each of the analyzed MCs. Results. We analyze how the expansion speed depends on the MC size, the translation velocity, and the heliocentric distance, finding that all MCs in the subset of non-perturbed MCs expand with almost the same non-dimensional expansion rate (ζ). We find departures from this general rule for ζ only for perturbed MCs, and we interpret the departures as the consequence of a local and strong SW perturbation by SW fast streams, affecting the MC even inside its interior, in addition to the direct interaction region between the SW and the MC. We also compute the dependence of the mean total SW pressure on the solar distance and we confirm that the decrease of the total SW pressure with distance is the main origin of the observed MC expansion rate. We found that ζ was 0.91 ± 0.23 for non-perturbed MCs while ζ was 0.48 ± 0.79 for perturbed MCs, the larger spread in the last ones being due to the influence of the solar wind local environment conditions on the expansion.
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