The Athena X-IFU end-to-end simulator
Creators
- 1. FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Remeis Observatory & ECAP
- 2. CNES
- 3. Instituto de Física de Cantabria (CSIC-UC)
- 4. CEA Saclay
Description
We present the implementation of the official simulator of the Athena X-IFU instrument within the SIXTE end-to-end simulation package.
For the X-IFU, SIXTE implements all relevant physical effects that are necessary for a faithful representation of the imaging spectroscopy capabilities of the instrument. SIXTE can therefore be used to simulate X-IFU observations of point sources and extended sources, including sources with spatially variable spectral shapes and very bright sources.
Examples of the microcalorimeter effects that are implemented are event grading and crosstalk. These effects cause the energy reconstruction of an X-ray event to be affected by photons impacting either on the same pixel or on different pixels coupled via the focal plane or the readout chain, respectively. The different types of crosstalk are parametrized using both laboratory data and physics simulations with the X-IFU instrument simulator xifusim.
As a result of these effects, the X-IFU performance degrades for very bright sources. To mitigate this degradation, the simulator can be operated in different observation modes, such as the use of Be filters to block lower energy photons and a defocused mode, which spreads events from a point source over the whole detector.
Files
Athena2022_Kirsch.pdf
Files
(758.0 kB)
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