X-ray imaging and spectroscopy performance of a large area silicon drift chamber for wide-field x-ray astronomy applications

In the context of the design of wide-field of view experiments for X-ray astronomy, we studied the response to X-rays in the range between 2 and 60 keV of a large area Silicon Drift Chamber originally designed for particle tracking in high energy physics. We demonstrated excellent imaging and spectroscopy performance of monolithic 53 cm2 detectors, with position resolution as good as 30 μm and energy resolution in the range 300-570 eV FWHM obtainable at room temperature (20 °C). In this paper we show the results of test campaigns at the X-ray facility at INAF/IASF Rome, aimed at characterizing the detector performance by scanning the detector area with highly collimated spots of monochromatic X-rays. In these tests we used a detector prototype equipped with discrete read-out front-end electronics