Proportional counters and microchannel plates
Sebastian Diebold

TL;DR
This paper reviews the development, principles, and applications of proportional counters and microchannel plate detectors in X-ray astronomy, highlighting their historical significance, technological improvements, and current research directions.
Contribution
It provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution, performance enhancements, and recent advancements of proportional counters and MCP detectors in space-based X-ray astronomy.
Findings
Proportional counters significantly improved background discrimination and lifetime.
Microchannel plates achieved spatial resolutions down to tens of micrometers.
Current developments focus on polarization measurement and ultraviolet applications.
Abstract
Developed right at the beginning of the space age in the 1940s, the proportional counter was the first detector used in X-ray astronomy and stayed its workhorse for almost four decades. Although the principle of such a detector seems to be rather simple, over time it underwent considerable performance improvements and the lifetime under orbital conditions was extended tremendously. Particularly the invention of position-sensitive proportional counters provided new and sophisticated methods to discriminate background and thus enabled observations of much weaker sources. A leap forward in position resolution was achieved with the advent of microchannel plate (MCP) detectors in the 1970s. In contrary to gas filled detectors, they provide no considerable energy resolution but feature spatial resolutions reaching down to a few tens of micrometers, fitting ideally the angular resolution of…
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Taxonomy
TopicsPhotocathodes and Microchannel Plates · Radiation Therapy and Dosimetry · X-ray Spectroscopy and Fluorescence Analysis
