Title: NIST Develops Real-Time X-Ray Pulse Processing System for Microcalorimeter Detectors
Summary:
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed a new hardware and software system that allows for real-time processing of x-ray pulses from microcalorimeter detectors. This system can process pulses from multiple detector elements simultaneously, providing a single histogram of x-ray energies with the maximum achievable energy resolution.
Key features of the new system include:
1. Real-time processing of pulses from multiple detector elements
2. Automatic rejection of corrupted or piled-up pulses
3. Optimal noise filtering of pulses
4. Determination of pulse heights
5. Parallel processing of pulses from multiple absorbers
The system represents an improvement over previous analog-based microcalorimeter detectors, which provided only a crude approximation of the energy resolution. Alternative digital processing methods required running a software sequence to eliminate pileup pulses, identify pathological conditions, construct digital filters, filter pulses, determine pulse heights, and convert them into energy spectra.
The new NIST system performs all these functions in parallel and in real time, producing a continuously updated single histogram of all pulses according to energy. This real-time processing capability resolves issues such as pulse pileup, flux jumps in superconducting electronics, and differences in characteristics between multiple detector elements, eliminating the need for time-consuming procedures.
Keywords: Microcalorimeter, Superconducting, Quantum state, X-ray pulses, Energy resolution
