Background Measurements With the Prototype Nuclear Compton Telescope

Details Background Measurements With the Prototype Nuclear Compton Telescope Background Measurements With the Prototype Nuclear Compton Telescope

Sep 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006head....9.1823b&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, HEAD meeting #9, #18.23; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.385

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The Nuclear Compton Telescope (NCT) is a balloon-borne soft gamma-ray (0.2 MeV-10 MeV) telescope designed to study astrophysical sources of nuclear line emission and polarization. A prototype instrument was successfully launched from Ft. Sumner, NM on June 1, 2005. The NCT prototype consists of two 3D position sensitive High-Purity-Germanium (HPGe) strip detectors fabricated with amorphous Ge contacts. The compact design and new technologies allow NCT to achieve high efficiencies with excellent spectral resolution and background reduction. Here we present a study of 5 hours of background measurements made at a float altitude of 40 km, with particular attention on the 511 keV electron-positron annihilation line. The expected contributions to the background component are discussed, especially in light of Monte Carlo simulations incorporating complete environmental inputs, including cosmic and atmospheric photon distributions, primary cosmic rays, cosmic ray secondaries (especially neutrons), and activation induced components. Historical and recent background models are incorporated into the simulations in an attempt to compare the relative performance of the models, and to demonstrate our background reduction techniques. We also summarize the current status of our energy and depth calibrations, and discuss in detail the determination of the instrument effective area, including the angular and energy dependence.

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