Sub-eV uncertainties on gamma-ray energies using a magnetic microcalorimeter—potential new reference energies

We present new measurements of 27 gamma-ray energies ranging from 14 keV to 136 keV, obtained using magnetic microcalorimeters for energy-dispersive spectrometry. The spectrometer has eight pixels and achieves a high energy resolution between 15 eV and 30 eV across the entire energy range. It faces a cryogenic source sampler with four movable sources, each containing a mixture of radionuclides, including $^{169}$Yb and $^{57}$Co. Four gamma-ray lines from $^{169}$Yb and one from $^{57}$Co were used to calibrate the spectrometer and correct for its non-linearity in the energy range 14 keV–130 keV. The gamma-ray energies, emitted through the decay of $^{57}$Co, $^{109}$Cd, $^{133}$Ba, $^{153}$Gd, $^{154}$Eu, $^{155}$Eu, $^{169}$Yb, $^{170}$Tm, $^{210}$Pb, $^{239}$Np, $^{241}$Am and $^{243}$Am, have been reassessed. This work significantly reduces the uncertainties upon previously reported gamma energies obtained by energy-dispersive spectrometry using semiconductor detectors: the lowest absolute uncertainty achieved is 0.13 eV at 105.3 keV, which corresponds to a relative uncertainty of 1.3 ppm. With respect to the available literature, among the 27 measured gamma-ray lines, the uncertainties of 10 energies were reduced by a factor of 5, while those of 4 additional energies were reduced by more than one order of magnitude.