Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2003-08-19
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
12 pages, 10 figures, to appear in Proc. SPIE 5165, "X-Ray and Gamma-Ray Instrumentation for Astronomy XIII"
Scientific paper
10.1117/12.505838
We present a concept for an imaging gamma-ray polarimeter operating from ~50 MeV to ~1 GeV. Such an instrument would be valuable for the study of high-energy pulsars, active galactic nuclei, supernova remnants, and gamma-ray bursts. The concept makes use of pixelized gas micro-well detectors, under development at Goddard Space Flight Center, to record the electron-positron tracks from pair-production events in a large gas volume. Pixelized micro-well detectors have the potential to form large-volume 3-D track imagers with ~100 micron (rms) position resolution at moderate cost. The combination of high spatial resolution and a continuous low-density gas medium permits many thousands of measurements per radiation length, allowing the particle tracks to be imaged accurately before multiple scattering masks their original directions. The polarization of the incoming radiation may then be determined from the azimuthal distribution of the electron-positron pairs. We have performed Geant4 simulations of these processes to estimate the polarization sensitivity of a simple telescope geometry at 100 MeV.
Bloser Peter F.
Depaola Gerardo O.
Hunter Stan D.
Longo Francesco
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