Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 1988
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1988nimpa.273..575t&link_type=abstract
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A, Volume 273, Issue 2-3, p. 575-582.
Physics
6
Scientific paper
Superconducting tunneling junctions (STJ) have been demonstrated to be sensitive detectors for X-rays at energies of 6 keV. The measured energy resolution for Sn/Sn-oxide/Sn junctions (75 × 75 μm2) at an operating temperature below 0.5 K is 65 eV (FWHM) at an energy of 5.89 keV. An extrapolation to vanishing electronic noise yielded a resolution of 40 eV. This improved energy resolution compared to conventional semiconductors is due to the thousand times smaller energy gap of a superconductor. The mechanisms of the detector is the production of excess quasiparticles (single particle electronic excitations) by the breaking of Cooper pairs (condensed electronic ground state). These excess quasiparticles tunnel across the insulating barrier owing to the quantum mechanical tunneling effect. The additional current is integrated by means of a charge sensitive preamplifier. The basic physics of the detector is presented and possible applications in astrophysics are discussed.
Present address: Institut de Physique, Rue A.-L. Breguet 1, CH-2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
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