Speaker
Description
Most of the visible matter in the universe exists as highly ionized plasmas, consisting of highly charged ions (HCIs). Due to their high effective nuclear charge, HCIs strongly emit radiation in the X-ray regime and can be observed with X-ray satellites, such as XRISM.
To study these ions in a laboratory setting and establish spectral benchmarks that meet the accuracy requirements of XRISM and other future X-ray observatories, such as NewAthena, we combined an electron-beam ion trap (EBIT) from MPIK with a state-of-the-art X-ray spectrometer based on an array of transition-edge sensors (TES) from SRON to perform high-precision spectroscopy.
The ions are produced and trapped in the EBIT while the TES-array observes the light they emit after electron-ion and ion-neutral interaction with a high resolution between 2eV and 4eV over a wide spectral bandwidth from 300eV to 13keV with minimal background signal.
To facilitate the precision of the detector, we calibrate it using well-known spectral lines from the simplest HCIs, H-like and He-like ions. To ensure stability of the detector response over time and maintain the validity of our calibration, we implemented a novel high-flux solid target X-ray source, providing fiducial lines for drift correction and as a secondary calibration standard.
Using this calibration and stability we investigated several systems of high astrophysical relevance, such as the K-shell emissions of Si,S,Cl,Ar,Fe and Ni, while operating almost continuously since June 2024.
In this contribution we describe our setup, the calibration campaign and give an overview of our measurements, exploring the different atomic processes relevant for X-ray astronomy we observe under controlled conditions.
| Talk category | Splinter 1: Large Infrastructure and instrumentation |
|---|---|
| PhD relevance | 4th |
