With the improving energy resolution of transition-edge sensor (TES) based microcalorimeters, performance verification and calibration of these detectors have become increasingly challenging, especially in the energy range below 1 keV where fluorescent atomic X-ray lines have linewidths that are wider than the detector energy resolution and require impractically high statistics to determine the gain and deconvolve the instrumental profile. Better behaved calibration sources such as grating monochromators are too cumbersome for space missions and are difficult to use in the lab. As an alternative, we are exploring the use of pulses of 3 eV optical photons delivered by an optical fiber to generate combs of known energies with known arrival times. Here, we discuss initial results of this technique obtained with 2 and 0.7 eV resolution X-ray microcalorimeters. With the 2 eV detector, we have achieved photon number resolution for pulses with mean photon number up to 133 (corresponding to 0.4 keV).

中文翻译：

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具有 3 eV 光学光子的高分辨率 X 射线 TES 微量热仪的能量校准

随着基于过渡边缘传感器 (TES) 的微量热仪能量分辨率的提高，这些探测器的性能验证和校准变得越来越具有挑战性，尤其是在低于 1 keV 的能量范围内，其中荧光原子 X 射线线的线宽比检测器能量分辨率，需要不切实际的高统计量来确定增益和去卷积仪器轮廓。性能更好的校准源（例如光栅单色器）对于太空任务来说过于繁琐，并且难以在实验室中使用。作为替代方案，我们正在探索使用由光纤传送的 3 eV 光子脉冲来生成已知能量和已知到达时间的梳状波。在这里，我们讨论用 2 和 0 获得的这种技术的初始结果。7 eV 分辨率 X 射线微量热仪。使用 2 eV 探测器，我们已经实现了平均光子数高达 133（对应于 0.4 keV）的脉冲的光子数分辨率。