Theory and development of position-sensitive quantum calorimeters

Quantum calorimeters are being developed as imaging spectrometers for future X-ray astrophysics observatories. Much of the science to be done by these instruments could benefit greatly from larger focal-plane coverage of the detector (without increasing pixel size). An order of magnitude more area will greatly increase the science throughput of these future instruments. One of the main deterrents to achieving this goal is the complexity of the readout schemes involved. We devised a way to increase the number of pixels from the current baseline designs by an order of magnitude without increasing the number of channels required for readout.; The instrument is a high energy resolution, distributed-readout imaging spectrometer called a Position-Sensitive Transition-Edge Sensor (PoST). A PoST is a quantum calorimeter consisting of two Transition-Edge Sensors (TESs) on the ends of a long absorber to do one-dimensional imaging spectroscopy. Comparing rise time and energy information, the position of the event in the PoST is determined. Energy is inferred from the sum of the two pulses.; We develop a generalized theoretical formalism for distributed-readout calorimeters and apply it to our devices. We derive the noise theory and calculate the theoretical energy resolution of a PoST. Our calculations show that a 7-pixel PoST with 6∼keV saturation energy can achieve 2.3∼eV resolution, making this a competitive design for future quantum calorimeter instruments.; For this thesis we fabricated 7- and 15-pixel PoSTs using Mo/Au TESs and gold absorbers, and moved from concept drawings on scraps of napkins to a 32 eV at 1.5 keV energy resolution 7-pixel PoST calorimeter.