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Preprint 19/11

Kapton polymeric films to shield X-ray detectors in orbit

E. Perinati (1), S. Lotti (2), L. Colasanti (2), C. Macculi (2), T. Mineo (3), L. Natalucci (2) and L. Piro (2)

(1) IAAT- University of Tübingen,Germany
(2) INAF- Istituto di Astrofisca Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica di Roma, Italy
(3) INAF- Istituto di Astrofisca Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica di Palermo, Italy

To be published in: Journal of Low Temperature Physics

Abstract. We are investigating possible technical solutions to minimize the instrumental non X-ray background (NXB) of the X-ray Micro-calorimeter Spectrometer (XMS) for the ATHENA space mission. In the proposed design, XMS will be provided with an anti-coincidence system in order to reject most of the X-Ray-like events produced by primary solar and cosmic particles that are expected to populate the L-2 space environment. However, the rejection efficiency of events produced by secondary particles cannot be as good as that of events produced directly by primary particles. Among secondary emitted particles, knock-on electrons have in general a major impact in determining the NXB level of X-ray detectors. For this reason, it may be helpful to adopt some techniques of passive shielding together with the use of the active anti-coincidence. We present preliminary results of a study on polyimide sheets, which could be employed to reduce the fluence of knock-on electrons onto XMS and, more in general, to optimize the design and configuration of X-ray detectors in orbit.
 
Key words: X-ray detectors, particle background, cryogenics, shielding, numerical computation

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