| Title: |
The X-ray Integral Field Unit at the end of the Athena reformulation phase |
| Authors: |
Peille, Philippe; Barret, Didier; Cucchetti, Edoardo; Albouys, Vincent; Piro, Luigi; Simionescu, Aurora; Cappi, Massimo; Bellouard, Elise; Cénac-Morthé, Céline; Daniel, Christophe; Pradines, Alice; Finoguenov, Alexis; Kelley, Richard; Mas-Hesse, J. Miguel; Paltani, Stéphane; Rauw, Gregor; Rozanska, Agata; Svoboda, Jiri; Wilms, Joern; Audard, Marc; Bozzo, Enrico; Costantini, Elisa; Dadina, Mauro; Dauser, Thomas; Decourchelle, Anne; den Herder, Jan Willem; Goldwurm, Andrea; Jonker, Peter; Markowitz, Alex; Mendez, Mariano; Miniutti, Giovanni; Molendi, Silvano; Nicastro, Fabrizio; Pajot, François; Pointecouteau, Etienne; Pratt, Gabriel W.; Schaye, Joop; Vink, Jacco; Webb, Natalie; Bandler, Simon; Barbera, Marco; Ceballos, Maria Teresa; Charles, Ivan; den Hartog, Roland; Doriese, W. Bertrand; Duval, Jean-Marc; Gatti, Flavio; Jackson, Brian; Kilbourne, Caroline; Macculi, Claudio; Martin, Sylvain; Parot, Yann; Porter, Frederick; Prêle, Damien; Ravera, Laurent; Smith, Stephen; Soucek, Jan; Thibert, Tanguy; Tuominen, Eija; Acero, Fabio; Ettori, Stefano; Grosso, Nicolas; Kaastra, Jelle; Mazzotta, Pasquale; Miller, Jon; Sciortino, Salvatore; Beaumont, Sophie; D’Andrea, Matteo; de Plaa, Jelle; Eckart, Megan; Gottardi, Luciano; Leutenegger, Maurice; Lotti, Simone; Molin, Alexei; Natalucci, Lorenzo; Adil, Muhammad Qazi; Argan, Andrea; Cavazzuti, Elisabetta; Fiorini, Mauro; Khosropanah, Pourya; Medinaceli Villegas, Eduardo; Minervini, Gabriele; Perry, James; Pinsard, Frederic; Raulin, Desi; Rigano, Manuela; Roelfsema, Peter; Schwander, Denis; Terron, Santiago; Torrioli, Guido; Ullom, Joel; Zuchniak, Monika; Chaoul, Laurence; Torrejon, Jose Miguel; Brachet, Frank; Cobo, Beatriz; Durkin, Malcolm; Fioretti, Valentina; Geoffray, Hervé; Jacques, Lionel; Kirsch, Christian; Lo Cicero, Ugo; Adams, Joseph; Gloaguen, Emilie; Gonzalez, Manuel; Hull, Samuel; Jellyman, Erik; Kiviranta, Mikko; Sakai, Kazuhiro; Taralli, Emanuele; Vaccaro, Davide; van der Hulst, Paul; van der Kuur, Jan; van Leeuwen, Bert-Joost; van Loon, Dennis; Wakeham, Nicholas; Auricchio, Natalia; Brienza, Daniele; Cheatom, Oscar; Franssen, Philippe; Julien, Sabine; Le Mer, Isabelle; Moirin, David; Silva, Vitor; Todaro, Michela; Clerc, Nicolas; Coleiro, Alexis; Ptak, Andy; Puccetti, Simonetta; Surace, Christian; Abdoelkariem, Shariefa; Adami, Christophe; Aicardi, Corinne; André, Jérôme; Angelinelli, Matteo; Anvar, Shebli; Arnaldi, Luis Horacio; Attard, Anthony; Audley, Damian; Bancel, Florian; Banks, Kimberly; Bernard, Vivian; Bij de Vaate, Jan Geralt; Bonino, Donata; Bonnamy, Anthony; Bonny, Patrick; Boreux, Charles; Bounab, Ayoub; Brigitte, Maïmouna; Bruijn, Marcel; Brysbaert, Clément; Bulgarelli, Andrea; Calarco, Simona; Camus, Thierry; Canourgues, Florent; Capobianco, Vito; Cardiel, Nicolas; Celasco, Edvige; Chen, Si; Chervenak, James; Chiarello, Fabio; Clamagirand, Sébastien; Coeur-Joly, Odile; Corcione, Leonardo; Coriat, Mickael; Coulet, Anais; Courty, Bernard; Coynel, Alexandre; D’Ai, Antonino; Dambrauskas, Eugenio; D’anca, Fabio; Dauner, Lea; De Gerone, Matteo; DeNigris, Natalie; Dercksen, Johannes; de Wit, Martin; Dieleman, Pieter; DiPirro, Michael; Doumayrou, Eric; Duband, Lionel; Dubbeldam, Luc; Dupieux, Michel; Dupourqué, Simon; Durand, Jean Louis; Eckert, Dominique; Ferrando, Philippe; Ferrari Barusso, Lorenzo; Finkbeiner, Fred; Fiocchi, Mariateresa; Fossecave, Hervé; Gabici, Stefano; Gallucci, Giovanni; Gant, Florent; Gao, Jian-Rong; Gastaldello, Fabio; Genolet, Ludovic; Ghizzardi, Simona; Giovannini, Elisa; Giustini, Margherita; Givaudan, Alain; Godet, Olivier; Gomez, Alicia; Gonzalez, Raoul; Gozaliasl, Ghassem; Grandsire, Laurent; Granena, David; Gros, Michel; Guerin, Corentin; Guilhem, Emmanuel; Guizzo, Gian Paolo; Gu, Liyi; Irwin, Kent; Jacquey, Christian; Janiuk, Agnieszka; Jaubert, Jean; Jolly, Antoine; Jourdan, Thierry; Knödlseder, Jürgen; König, Ole; Korb, Andrew; Kreykenbohm, Ingo; Lafforgue, David; Lan, Radek; Larrieu, Maélyss; Laudet, Philippe; Laurent, Philippe; Laurent, Sylvain; Laurenza, Monica; Le Cam, Maël; Lesrel, Jean; Ligori, Sebastiano; Lorenz, Maximilian; Luminari, Alfredo; Madsen, Kristin; Maisonnave, Océane; Marelli, Lorenzo; Marty, Wilfried; Massida, Zoé; Massonet, Didier; Maussang, Irwin; Merino Alonso, Pablo Eleazar; Mesquida, Jean; Mineo, Teresa; Montinaro, Nicola; Murat, David; Nagayoshi, Kenichiro; Nazé, Yaël; Noguès, Loïc; Nouals, François; Ortega, Cristina; Panessa, Francesca; Parodi, Luigi; Piconcelli, Enrico; Pinto, Ciro; Porquet, Delphine; Prouvé, Thomas; Punch, Michael; Rioland, Guillaume; Riollet, Marc-Olivier; Rodriguez, Louis; Roig, Anton; Roncarelli, Mauro; Roucayrol, Lionel; Roudil, Gilles; Ruiz de Ocenda, Lander; Sciortino, Luisa; Simonella, Olivier; Sordet, Michael; Taubenschuss, Ulrich; Terrasa, Guilhem; Terrier, Régis; Ubertini, Pietro; Uhlir, Ludek; Uslenghi, Michela; van Weers, Henk; Varisco, Salvatore; Varniere, Peggy; Volpe, Angela; Walmsley, Gavin; Wise, Michael; Wolnievik, Andreas; Woźniak, Grzegorz |
| Contributors: |
Department of Physics |
| Publisher Information: |
Springer Netherlands |
| Publication Year: |
2026 |
| Collection: |
Helsingfors Universitet: HELDA – Helsingin yliopiston digitaalinen arkisto |
| Subject Terms: |
Athena; Instrumentation; Micro-calorimeters; X-ray integral field unit; X-rays; Physical sciences |
| Description: |
The Athena mission entered a redefinition phase in July 2022, driven by the imperative to reduce the mission cost at completion for the European Space Agency below an acceptable target, while maintaining the flagship nature of its science return. This notably called for a complete redesign of the X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU) cryogenic architecture towards a simpler active cooling chain. Passive cooling via successive radiative panels at spacecraft level is now used to provide a 50 K thermal environment to an X-IFU owned cryostat. 4.5 K cooling is achieved via a single remote active cryocooler unit, while a multi-stage Adiabatic Demagnetization Refrigerator ensures heat lift down to the 50 mK required by the detectors. Amidst these changes, the core concept of the readout chain remains robust, employing Transition Edge Sensor microcalorimeters and a SQUID-based Time-Division Multiplexing scheme. Noteworthy is the introduction of a slower pixel. This enables an increase in the multiplexing factor (from 34 to 48) without compromising the instrument energy resolution, hence keeping significant system margins to the new 4 eV resolution requirement. This allows reducing the number of channels by more than a factor two, and thus the resource demands on the system, while keeping a 4’ field of view (compared to 5’ before). In this article, we will give an overview of this new architecture, before detailing its anticipated performances. ; Peer reviewed |
| Document Type: |
article in journal/newspaper |
| File Description: |
application/pdf |
| Language: |
English |
| ISBN: |
978-86-00-01232-6; 86-00-01232-5 |
| Relation: |
It is a pleasure to thank all the members of the Athena community and beyond, for their support and guidance along the reformulation of the Athena mission. A special thank to the Science Redefinition Team and its Chairs, Mike Cruise and Matteo Guainazzi, for their constructive and positive interactions with the X-IFU consortium leads. Thank you also the mission reformulation team, involving ESA, NASA, JAXA and the WFI and X-IFU consortia, for leading the successful reformulation of Athena. Finally, we would like to re-express our gratitude to the lead funding agencies supporting X-IFU for their unfailing and vigorous support, at a time when the future of the mission was not secured, and from now on, towards the goal of adopting NewAthena in 2027. The Italian contribution to XIFU is supported by ASI (Italian Space Agency) through Contract No. 2019-27-HH.0. The X-IFU consortium members working at Instituto de F\u00EDsica de Cantabria acknowledge Grant PID2021_122955OB-C41 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by \u201CERDF A way of making Europe\u201D.; https://hdl.handle.net/10138/628900; 86000123254; 001439275100001 |
| Availability: |
https://hdl.handle.net/10138/628900 |
| Rights: |
other ; info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess ; openAccess |
| Accession Number: |
edsbas.C140EB0 |
| Database: |
BASE |