201. Cryogenic Microcalorimeter System for Ultra-High Resolution Alpha-Particle Spectrometry.
- Author
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Croce, M. P., Bacrania, M. K., Hoover, A. S., Rabin, M. W., Hoteling, N. J., LaMont, S. P., Plionis, A. A., Dry, D. E., Ullom, J. N., Bennett, D. A., Horansky, R. D., Kotsubo, V., and Cantor, R.
- Subjects
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CALORIMETERS , *ALPHA ray spectrometry , *DETECTORS , *LIQUID nitrogen , *CRYOSTATS - Abstract
Microcalorimeters have been shown to yield unsurpassed energy resolution for alpha spectrometry, up to 1.06 keV FWHM at 5.3 MeV. These detectors use a superconducting transition-edge sensor (TES) to measure the temperature change in an absorber from energy deposited by an interacting alpha particle. Our system has four independent detectors mounted inside a liquid nitrogen/liquid helium cryostat. An adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator (ADR) cools the detector stage to its operating temperature of 80 mK. Temperature regulation with ∼15-μK peak-to-peak variation is achieved by PID control of the ADR. The detectors are voltage-biased, and the current signal is amplified by a commercial SQUID readout system and digitized for further analysis. This paper will discuss design and operation of our microcalorimeter alpha-particle spectrometer, and will show recent results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...
- Published
- 2009
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