The development of micropixel gas detectors, capable to image tracks produced in a gas by photoelectrons, makes possible to perform polarimetry of X-ray celestial sources in the focus of grazing incidence X-ray telescopes. HXMT is a mission by the Chinese Space Agency aimed to survey the Hard X-ray Sky with Phoswich detectors, by exploitation of the direct demodulation technique. Since a fraction of the HXMT time will be spent on dedicated pointing of particular sources, it could host, with moderate additional resources a pair of X-ray telescopes, each with a photoelectric X-ray polarimeter in the focal plane. We present the design of the telescopes and the focal plane instrumentation and discuss the performance of this instrument to detect the degree and angle of linear polarization of some representative sources. Notwithstanding the limited resources the proposed instrument can represent a breakthrough in X-ray Polarimetry.
Scheda prodotto non validato
Attenzione! I dati visualizzati non sono stati sottoposti a validazione da parte dell'ateneo
Data di pubblicazione: | 2007 | |
Titolo: | An x-ray polarimeter for HXMT mission | |
Autori: | Costa, Enrico; Bellazzini, Ronaldo; Tagliaferri, Gianpiero; Baldini, Luca; Basso, Stefano; Bregeon, Johan; Brez, Alessandro; Citterio, Oberto; Cotroneo, Vincenzo; Frontera, Filippo; Frutti, Massimo; Matt, Giorgio; Minuti, Massimo; Muleri, Fabio; Pareschi, Giovanni; Perola, Giuseppe Cesare; Rubini, Alda; Sgro, Carmelo; Soffitta, Paolo; Spandre, Gloria | |
Rivista: | PROCEEDINGS OF SPIE, THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR OPTICAL ENGINEERING | |
Abstract: | The development of micropixel gas detectors, capable to image tracks produced in a gas by photoelectrons, makes possible to perform polarimetry of X-ray celestial sources in the focus of grazing incidence X-ray telescopes. HXMT is a mission by the Chinese Space Agency aimed to survey the Hard X-ray Sky with Phoswich detectors, by exploitation of the direct demodulation technique. Since a fraction of the HXMT time will be spent on dedicated pointing of particular sources, it could host, with moderate additional resources a pair of X-ray telescopes, each with a photoelectric X-ray polarimeter in the focal plane. We present the design of the telescopes and the focal plane instrumentation and discuss the performance of this instrument to detect the degree and angle of linear polarization of some representative sources. Notwithstanding the limited resources the proposed instrument can represent a breakthrough in X-ray Polarimetry. | |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI): | 10.1117/12.734536 | |
Handle: | http://hdl.handle.net/11392/533060 | |
Appare nelle tipologie: | 03.1 Articolo su rivista |