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Preliminary Mechanical Characterization of Thermal Filters for the X-IFU Instrument on Athena

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Abstract

The X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU) is one of the two instruments of the Athena astrophysics space mission approved by ESA in the Cosmic Vision Science Program. The X-IFU consists of a large array of TES microcalorimeters that will operate at ~ 50 mK inside a sophisticated cryostat. A set of thin filters, highly transparent to X-rays, will be mounted on the cryostat thermal shields in order to attenuate the IR radiative load, to attenuate RF electromagnetic interferences, and to protect the detector from contamination. In this paper, we present the current thermal filters design, describe the filter samples developed/procured so far, and present preliminary results from the ongoing characterization tests.

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Acknowledgements

The research leading to these results has received funding from ASI (Italian Space Agency) through the Contract No. 2015-046-R.0 and from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Program under the AHEAD Project (Grant Agreement No. 654215). We acknowledge fruitful discussions and support by LUXEL corp.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Fisica e Chimica, Università degli Studi di Palermo (UNIPA), Palermo, Italy

    Marco Barbera, Ugo Lo Cicero, Luisa Sciortino, Fabio D’Anca, Salvatore Ferruggia Bonura & Flavio Nuzzo

  2. Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo “G. S. Vaiana”, INAF, Palermo, Italy

    Marco Barbera, Ugo Lo Cicero, Salvatore Ferruggia Bonura, Antonio Jimenez Escobar, Angela Ciaravella, Alfonso Collura & Salvatore Varisco

  3. BCV progetti s.r.l, Milan, Italy

    Giancarlo Parodi

  4. Istituto di BioFisica U.O.S. di Palermo, CNR, Palermo, Italy

    Fabio D’Anca & Paolo Giglio

  5. Dipartimento dell’Innovazione Industriale e Digitale, UNIPA, Palermo, Italy

    Paolo Giglio

  6. Centre Spatial de Liège, Université de Liège, Angleur, Belgium

    Valerie Samain

Authors
  1. Marco Barbera
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  2. Ugo Lo Cicero
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  3. Luisa Sciortino
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  4. Giancarlo Parodi
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  5. Fabio D’Anca
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  6. Paolo Giglio
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  7. Salvatore Ferruggia Bonura
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  8. Flavio Nuzzo
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  9. Antonio Jimenez Escobar
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  10. Angela Ciaravella
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  11. Alfonso Collura
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  12. Salvatore Varisco
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  13. Valerie Samain
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marco Barbera.

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Barbera, M., Lo Cicero, U., Sciortino, L. et al. Preliminary Mechanical Characterization of Thermal Filters for the X-IFU Instrument on Athena. J Low Temp Phys 193, 793–798 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-018-1942-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-018-1942-z

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