The Wide-Field Imager for IXO: Status and future activities

• Main Authors: Struder, Lothar (Author), Aschauer, Florian (Author), Herrmann, Sven (Author), Lauf, Thomas (Author), Meuris, Aline (Author), Porro, Matteo (Author), Reiffers, Jonas (Author), de Vita, Giulio (Author), Bautz, Mark W. (Contributor), Bombelli, Luca (Author), Fiorini, Carlo (Author), Burrows, David (Author), Fraser, George (Author), Kendziorra, Eckhard (Author), Santangelo, Andrea (Author), Tenzer, Chris (Author), Kuster, Markus (Author), Lechner, Peter (Author), Lutz, Gerhard (Author), Majewski, Petra (Author), Soltau, Heike (Author), Richter, Rainer (Author), Stefanescu, Alexander (Author), Treis, Johannes (Author), Tsunemi, Hiroshi (Author), Wilms, Jorn (Author)
• Other Authors: MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (Contributor), Bautz, Mark (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SPIE, 2011-07-15T13:51:00Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

The Wide Field Imager (WFI) of the International X-ray Observatory (IXO) is an X-ray imaging spectrometer based on a large monolithic DePFET (Depleted P-channel Field Effect Transistor) Active Pixel Sensor. Filling an area of 10 x 10 cm2 with a format of 1024 x 1024 pixels it will cover a field of view of 18 arcmin. The pixel size of 100 x 100 μm2 corresponds to a fivefold oversampling of the telescope's expected 5 arcsec point spread function. The WFI's basic DePFET structure combines the functionalities of sensor and integrated amplifier with nearly Fano-limited energy resolution and high efficiency from 100 eV to 15 keV. The development of dedicated control and amplifier ASICs allows for high frame rates up to 1 kHz and flexible readout modes. Results obtained with representative prototypes with a format of 256 x 256 pixels are presented.