No Arabic abstract
The NeXT mission has been proposed to study high-energy non-thermal phenomena in the universe. The high-energy response of the super mirror will enable us to perform the first sensitive imaging observations up to 80 keV. The focal plane detector, which combines a fully depleted X-ray CCD and a pixellated CdTe detector, will provide spectra and images in the wide energy range from 0.5 keV to 80 keV. In the soft gamma-ray band up to ~1 MeV, a narrow field-of-view Compton gamma-ray telescope utilizing several tens of layers of thin Si or CdTe detector will provide precise spectra with much higher sensitivity than present instruments. The continuum sensitivity will reach several times 10^(-8) photons/s/keV/cm^(2) in the hard X-ray region and a few times10^(-7) photons/s/keV/cm^(2) in the soft gamma-ray region.
ASTRO-H is the next generation JAXA X-ray satellite, intended to carry instruments with broad energy coverage and exquisite energy resolution. The Soft Gamma-ray Detector (SGD) is one of ASTRO-H instruments and will feature wide energy band (40-600 keV) at a background level 10 times better than the current instruments on orbit. SGD is complimentary to ASTRO-Hs Hard X-ray Imager covering the energy range of 5-80 keV. The SGD achieves low background by combining a Compton camera scheme with a narrow field-of-view active shield where Compton kinematics is utilized to reject backgrounds. The Compton camera in the SGD is realized as a hybrid semiconductor detector system which consists of silicon and CdTe (cadmium telluride) sensors. Good energy resolution is afforded by semiconductor sensors, and it results in good background rejection capability due to better constraints on Compton kinematics. Utilization of Compton kinematics also makes the SGD sensitive to the gamma-ray polarization, opening up a new window to study properties of gamma-ray emission processes. The ASTRO-H mission is approved by ISAS/JAXA to proceed to a detailed design phase with an expected launch in 2014. In this paper, we present science drivers and concept of the SGD instrument followed by detailed description of the instrument and expected performance.
For the first time in the history of high energy astronomy, a large CdTe gamma-ray camera is operating in space. ISGRI is the low-energy camera of the IBIS telescope on board the INTEGRAL satellite. This paper details its design and its in-flight behavior and performances. Having a sensitive area of 2621 cm$^2$ with a spatial resolution of 4.6 mm, a low threshold around 12 keV and an energy resolution of $sim$ 8% at 60 keV, ISGRI shows absolutely no signs of degradation after 9 months in orbit. All aspects of its in-flight behavior and scientific performance are fully nominal, and in particular the observed background level confirms the expected sensitivity of 1 milliCrab for a 10$^6$s observation.
The Soft Gamma-ray Detector (SGD) is one of the instrument payloads onboard ASTRO-H, and will cover a wide energy band (60--600 keV) at a background level 10 times better than instruments currently in orbit. The SGD achieves low background by combining a Compton camera scheme with a narrow field-of-view active shield. The Compton camera in the SGD is realized as a hybrid semiconductor detector system which consists of silicon and cadmium telluride (CdTe) sensors. The design of the SGD Compton camera has been finalized and the final prototype, which has the same configuration as the flight model, has been fabricated for performance evaluation. The Compton camera has overall dimensions of 12 cm x 12 cm x 12 cm, consisting of 32 layers of Si pixel sensors and 8 layers of CdTe pixel sensors surrounded by 2 layers of CdTe pixel sensors. The detection efficiency of the Compton camera reaches about 15% and 3% for 100 keV and 511 keV gamma rays, respectively. The pixel pitch of the Si and CdTe sensors is 3.2 mm, and the signals from all 13312 pixels are processed by 208 ASICs developed for the SGD. Good energy resolution is afforded by semiconductor sensors and low noise ASICs, and the obtained energy resolutions with the prototype Si and CdTe pixel sensors are 1.0--2.0 keV (FWHM) at 60 keV and 1.6--2.5 keV (FWHM) at 122 keV, respectively. This results in good background rejection capability due to better constraints on Compton kinematics. Compton camera energy resolutions achieved with the final prototype are 6.3 keV (FWHM) at 356 keV and 10.5 keV (FWHM) at 662 keV, respectively, which satisfy the instrument requirements for the SGD Compton camera (better than 2%). Moreover, a low intrinsic background has been confirmed by the background measurement with the final prototype.
Gamma-Ray Integrated Detectors (GRID) mission is a student project designed to use multiple gamma-ray detectors carried by nanosatellites (CubeSats), forming a full-time all-sky gamma-ray detection network that monitors the transient gamma-ray sky in the multi-messenger astronomy era. A compact CubeSat gamma-ray detector, including its hardware and firmware, was designed and implemented for the mission. The detector employs four Gd2Al2Ga3O12 : Ce (GAGG:Ce) scintillators coupled with four silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) arrays to achieve a high gamma-ray detection efficiency between 10 keV and 2 MeV with low power and small dimensions. The first detector designed by the undergraduate student team onboard a commercial CubeSat was launched into a Sun-synchronous orbit on October 29, 2018. The detector was in a normal observation state and accumulated data for approximately one month after on-orbit functional and performance tests, which were conducted in 2019.
The Soft X-ray Imager (SXI) is one of the three instruments on board EXIST, a multi-wavelength observatory in charge of performing a global survey of the sky in hard X-rays searching for Super-massive Black Holes (Grindlay & Natalucci, these Proceedings). One of the primary objectives of EXIST is also to study with unprecedented sensitivity the most unknown high energy sources in the Universe, like high redshift GRBs, which will be pointed promptly by the Spacecraft by autonomous trigger based on hard X-ray localization on board. The presence of a soft X-ray telescope with an effective area of about 950cm2 in the energy band 0.2-3 keV and extended response up to 10 keV will allow to make broadband studies from 0.1 to 600 keV. In particular, investigations of the spectra components and states of AGNs and monitoring of variability of sources, study of the prompt and afterglow emission of GRBs since the early phases, which will help to constrain the emission models and finally, help the identification of sources in the EXIST hard X-ray survey and the characterization of the transient events detected. SXI will also perform surveys: a scanning survey with sky coverage 2pi and a limiting flux of 5x10^(-14) cgs plus other serendipitous.