A Fast Scintillator Compton Telescope for Medium-Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

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Scientific paper

The field of medium-energy gamma-ray astronomy urgently needs a new mission to build on the success of the COMPTEL instrument. This mission must achieve a sensitivity significantly greater than that of COMPTEL in order to advance the science of relativistic particle accelerators, nuclear astrophysics, and diffuse backgrounds and bridge the gap between current and future hard X-ray missions and the high-energy Fermi mission. Such an increase in sensitivity can only come about via a dramatic decrease in the instrumental background. We are currently developing a concept for a low-background Compton telescope that employs modern scintillator technology to achieve this increase in sensitivity. Specifically, by employing Lanthanum Bromide scintillators for the calorimeter, one can take advantage of the unique speed and resolving power of this material to improve the instrument sensitivity and simultaneously enhance its spectroscopic performance and thus its imaging performance. We present the design and calibration results of a small prototype of such an instrument, scheduled to fly on a balloon test flight in the Fall of 2011. We discuss the expected results from this test flight and the expected sensitivity of a full-scale instrument on a long-duration balloon mission.

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