RT Journal Article
T1 The first cut is the cheapest: optimizing Athena/X-IFU-like TES detectors resolution by filter truncation
A1 Ceballos, M. Teresa
A1 Cardiel López, Nicolás
A1 Cobo, Beatriz
A1 Smith, Stephen J.
A1 Witthoeft, Michael C.
A1 Peille, Philippe
A1 Durkin, Malcolm S.
AB The X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU) instrument on the future ESA mission Athena X-ray Observatory is a cryogenic micro-calorimeter array of Transition Edge Sensor (TES) detectors designed to provide spatially-resolved high-resolution spectroscopy. The onboard reconstruction software provides energy, spatial location and arrival time of incoming X-ray photons hitting the detector. A new processing algorithm based on a truncation of the classical optimal filter and called 0-padding, has been recentlyproposed aiming to reduce the computational cost without compromising energy resolution. Initial tests with simple synthetic data displayed promising results. This study explores the slightly better performance of the 0-padding filter and assess its final application to real data. The goal is to examine the larger sensitivity to instrumental conditions that was previously observed during the analysis of the simulations. This 0-padding technique is thoroughly tested using more realistic simulations and real data acquired from NASA and NIST laboratories employing X-IFU-like TES detectors. Different fitting methods are applied to the data, and a comparative analysis is performed to assess the energy resolution values obtained from these fittings. The 0-padding filter achieves energy resolutions as good as those obtained with standard filters, even with those of larger lengths, across different line complexes and instrumental conditions. This method proves to be useful for energy reconstruction of X-ray photons detected by the TES detectors provided proper corrections for baseline drift and jitter effects are applied. The finding is highly promising especially for onboard processing, offering efficiency in computational resources and facilitating the análisis of sources with higher count rates at high resolution.
PB Springer Nature
SN 0922-6435
YR 2024
FD 2024-03-21
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/102852
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/102852
LA eng
NO Ceballos, M.T., Cardiel, N., Cobo, B. et al. The first cut is the cheapest: optimizing Athena/X-IFU-like TES detectors resolution by filter truncation. Exp Astron 57, 14 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-024-09930-2
NO Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER)
NO Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España)
DS Docta Complutense
RD 7 abr 2025