Abstract
This chapter is concerned with devices used to turn information, transported by the incident energy coming from astronomical sources, into signals which the astrophysicist can study. Such devices are called receivers or detectors.
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- 1.
André Lallemand (1904–1978) was a French astronomer who developed the idea of the photo-multiplier tube for use in astronomy.
- 2.
This result was demonstrated in 1909 by Albert Einstein, who used it as an argument to conclude the wave–particle duality of light. Einstein, A., Phys. Zeit. 10, 817 (1909).
- 3.
See, for example, Delaet, B., Feautrier, P., Villégier, J.-C., Benoît, A. X-ray and optical photon counting detector using superconducting tunnel junctions, IEEE Trans. 11, 2001.
- 4.
The French physicist Georges Charpak (1924–2010), who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1992, invented this experimental device for visualising elementary particles at CERN.
- 5.
Boksenberg A. and Coleman C.I., Advances in Electronics and Electron Physics 52, 355, 1979.
- 6.
The website www.src.le.ac.uk/projects/xmm/instrument/index.html provides a detailed description of cameras on board the XMM mission.
- 7.
See, for example, www.pnsensor.de/Welcome/Detector/pn-CCD/index.html.
- 8.
The high cost of these detectors is largely due to the complex quality control required by the many steps in the microelectronic fabrication process, and sorting out those detectors with no defective pixels and transistors from the resulting series.
- 9.
Frank James Low was an American solid-state physicist and astronomer, born in 1933, who pioneered infrared astronomy. He discovered the emission of the Kleinmann–Low nebula in Orion. See fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank-Low.
- 10.
See Billot, N. et al. Recent achievements on the development of the Herschel/PACS bolometer arrays, arXiv:astro-ph/0603086 (2006).
- 11.
This telescope started operations in 1988 at the top of Mauna Kea. Details can be found at www.submm.caltech.edu/cso/.
- 12.
See www.rssd.esa.int/SA/PLANCK/include/payl/node7.html for a description.
- 13.
The idea of the hot electron bolometer was originally put forward by Kinch M.A. and Rollin B.V., Br. J. Appl. Phys. 14, 672, 1963.
- 14.
- 15.
In the Swedish Submillimetron project (2007), a long-lived autonomous module carrying a submillimetre telescope, serviced by the International Space Station.
- 16.
The mixing effect of a quasiparticle current is described by Richards P.L. et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 34, 345, 1979.
- 17.
- 18.
The German physicist Walter Schottky (1886–1976) was one of the first to study the electronics of semiconductors and build devices with them.
- 19.
Arthur Compton was an American physicist (1892–1962) who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1927 for discovering the inelastic scattering of light by a particle of matter, an effect which now carries his name.
- 20.
The Russian physicist Pavel Cherenkov (1904–1990) won the Nobel Prize for Physics for explaining in 1937 the origin of the light radiation emitted by a liquid irradiated by a radioactive source, the effect which now carries his name.
- 21.
See www-dapnia.cea.fr/Sap/ for a description.
- 22.
- 23.
The acronymn also remembers the Austrian physicist Viktor Hess (1883–1964) who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1936, for his discovery of cosmic radiation in 1912.
- 24.
The site sigma-2.cesr.fr/spi/index.php3 gives a description of this spectrometer.
- 25.
In this section, the authors are grateful for the invaluable assistance of Michel Cribier.
- 26.
The Princeton astrophysicist John Bahcall (1934–2005) was a leading expert on the solar neutrino problem, along with the American chemist and physicist Raymond Davis (1914–2006), winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2002.
- 27.
Bruno Pontecorvo (1913–1993) was an atomic physicist. Born in Italy, he was an assistant of Enrico Fermi in Chicago, then emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1950.
- 28.
The Japanese physicist Masatoshi Koshiba, born in 1926, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2002 for his contribution to demonstrating the existence of neutrino oscillations.
- 29.
In this section, the authors are grateful for the invaluable assistance of Philippe Laurent.
- 30.
Boughin S.P. et al., Ap. J. 261, L19, 1982.
- 31.
See the very complete discussion by Vinet, J.-Y. Optical detection of gravitational waves, Compt. R. Acad. Sci. 8, 69–84, 2007.
- 32.
See virgo.web.lal.in2p3.fr and www.ligo.caltech.edu to follow progress with these instruments.
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Léna, P., Rouan, D., Lebrun, F., Mignard, F., Pelat, D. (2012). Detectors. In: Observational Astrophysics. Astronomy and Astrophysics Library. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21815-6_7
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