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40 - Polarimetry with ASTRO-H soft gamma-ray detector

from Part III - Future missions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2010

H. Tajima
Affiliation:
KIPAC, Stanford University
S. Takeda
Affiliation:
Institute for Space and Astronautical Science, JAXA
Ronaldo Bellazzini
Affiliation:
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Rome
Enrico Costa
Affiliation:
Istituto Astrofisica Spaziale, Rome
Giorgio Matt
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi Roma Tre
Gianpiero Tagliaferri
Affiliation:
Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera
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Summary

ASTRO-H is a next-generation JAXA X-ray satellite to be launched in 2014. The Soft Gamma-ray Detector (SGD) onboard ASTRO-H is a semi-conductor Compton camera with a narrow field-of-view (FOV) to achieve very low background. Although the SGD is primarily a spectrometer in the 40–600 keV energy band, it is also sensitive to polarization in the 50–200 keV energy band. This paper describes instrument design, expected performance, and experimental validation of polarimetric performance of the SGD.

Introduction

ASTRO-H, the new Japanese X-ray Astronomy Satellite following Suzaku, is a combination of

  • high energy-resolution soft X-ray spectroscopy (0.3–10 keV) provided by thin-foil X-ray optics (SXT, Soft X-ray Telescope) and a microcalorimeter array (SXS, Soft X-ray Spectrometer);

  • soft X-ray imaging spectroscopy (0.5–12 keV) provided by SXT and a CCD (SXI, Soft X-ray Imager);

  • hard X-ray imaging spectroscopy (3–80 keV) provided by multi-layer coating, focusing hard X-ray mirrors (HXT, Hard X-ray Telescope) and silicon (Si) and cadmium telluride (CdTe) cross-strip detectors (HXI, Hard X-ray Imager);

  • soft gamma-ray spectroscopy (40–600 keV) provided by semiconductor Compton camera with narrow FOV (SGD, Soft Gamma-ray Detector).

The SXT-SXS and SGD systems will be developed by an international collaboration led by Japanese and US institutions.

The SXS will use a 6×6 format microcalorimeter array. The energy resolution is expected to be better than 7 eV. The FOV and the effective area will be, respectively, about 3 arc minutes and about 210 cm2 combined with the ∼6 m focal-length SXT.

Type
Chapter
Information
X-ray Polarimetry
A New Window in Astrophysics
, pp. 275 - 283
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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