Title: High-speed X-ray imaging spectroscopy system with Zynq SoC for solar observations,
Abstract: We have developed a system combining a back-illuminated
Complementary-Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) imaging sensor and Xilinx Zynq
System-on-Chip (SoC) device for a soft X-ray (0.5-10 keV) imaging spectroscopy
observation of the Sun to investigate the dynamics of the solar corona. Because
typical timescales of energy release phenomena in the corona span a few minutes
at most, we aim to obtain the corresponding energy spectra and derive the
physical parameters, i.e., temperature and emission measure, every few tens of
seconds or less for future solar X-ray observations. An X-ray photon-counting
technique, with a frame rate of a few hundred frames per second or more, can
achieve such results. We used the Zynq SoC device to achieve the requirements.
Zynq contains an ARM processor core, which is also known as the Processing
System (PS) part, and a Programmable Logic (PL) part in a single chip. We use
the PL and PS to control the sensor and seamless recording of data to a storage
system, respectively. We aim to use the system for the third flight of the
Focusing Optics Solar X-ray Imager (FOXSI-3) sounding rocket experiment for the
first photon-counting X-ray imaging and spectroscopy of the Sun.