Very detailed information is now available from ultraviolet, optical, and submillimeter observations of the stellar, dust, and cold gas content of galaxies, and yet there is a dearth of understanding about the mechanisms that formed these galaxies. To truly understand how galaxies form, X-ray observations from high energy resolution imaging spectrometers are needed to see the cores of the galaxies themselves.
New large-area, high-angular-resolution, imaging X-ray spectrometers will expose the essential drivers of galaxy evolution, which leave imprints in the warm-to-hot plasma that cosmologists believe exists in the spaces between galaxies. These intergalactic spaces contain 40%–50% of the"normal matter" in the universe and extend well beyond the currently visible size of galaxies.
An ESA flagship mission currently in formulation will have a microcalorimeter array with about two-thousand pixels. The arrays under development by the NASA/MIT/NIST collaboration have around one-hundred thousand pixels or more, reaching the angular scales and array sizes normally only associated with charged-coupled device cameras.
When an incoming X-ray hits the microcalorimeter's absorber, its energy is converted into heat, which is measured by a thermometer. The temperature rise is directly proportional to the X-ray's energy. The thermometers employed with magnetic microcalorimeters use paramagnetism to enable high-precision temperature sensing.
The main factors limiting the development of microcalorimeter arrays with the desired size and angular resolution are the challenges involved in fabricating high-density, high-yield, microstrip superconducting wiring to connect all the pixels in the array. The major innovation employed to overcome this difficulty is to incorporate many layers of buried wiring underneath the top surface of detector chips on which the microcalorimeter arrays are then fabricated.
Figure 4: The magnetic calorimeter being fabricated by Dr. Archana Devasia and tested by Dr. Wonsik Yoon . Credit: NASA GSFC
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