Affiliations: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore CA
94550, USA | Vericold Technologies GmbH, D-80331 Munich,
Germany | Technische Universität München, Physik Department,
D-85747 Garching, Germany
Note: [] Corresponding author: Matthias Frank, Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, Physics and Advanced Technologies, M-Division, 7000 East
Avenue, Mail Stop L-174, Livermore, CA 94550, USA. Tel.: +1 925 423 5068; Fax:
+1 925 424 2778; E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: Cryogenic detectors are very sensitive, energy-resolving,
low-threshold photon and particle detectors, which have been developed over the
last decades for a variety of applications in particle physics and
astrophysics. More recently, cryogenic detectors have also been applied as
high-resolution, photon-counting detectors for energy-dispersive x-ray
spectroscopy (EDS) and x-ray fluorescence analysis (XRFA). Cryogenic detectors
can provide an about 10 times better energy resolution for x-rays than
achievable with "conventional" energy-dispersive detectors, such as HPGe and
Si(Li) detectors. In this review, we give a brief introduction to cryogenic
detectors (Section 1) and describe the basic operating principles and achieved
performance of two types of cryogenic detectors most applicable to EDS and
XRFA, superconducting tunnel junctions (Section 2) and hot-electron
microcalorimeters (Section 3). In section 4 we discuss various practical
aspects of using these cryogenic detectors for fluorescence applications
including their operation at ultra-low temperatures close to XRF specimens at
room temperature and achievable solid angle and efficiency. In Section 5 we
present results from selected recent EDS and XRF experiments performed with
cryogenic detectors and discuss their applications in semiconductor
microanalysis and in fluorescence-detected absorption spectroscopy.
