Calibration of the Stellar X-Ray Polarimeter

John A. Tomsick; Enrico Costa; J. Dwyer; Ronald F. Elsner; E. Ford; Philip E. Kaaret; Robert Novick; Andrea E. Santangelo; Eric H. Silver; Paolo Soffitta; Martin C. Weisskopf; Klaus Ziock

doi:10.1117/12.283780

15 October 1997 Calibration of the Stellar X-Ray Polarimeter

John A. Tomsick, Enrico Costa, J. Dwyer, Ronald F. Elsner, E. Ford, Philip E. Kaaret, Robert Novick, Andrea E. Santangelo, Eric H. Silver, Paolo Soffitta, Martin C. Weisskopf, Klaus Ziock

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 3114, EUV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Instrumentation for Astronomy VIII; (1997) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.283780
Event: Optical Science, Engineering and Instrumentation '97, 1997, San Diego, CA, United States

Abstract

The stellar x-ray polarimeter (SXRP) will be more than an order of magnitude more sensitive than any previous x-ray polarimeter in the 2 - 15 keV energy band. The SXRP is a focal plane detector for a Danish-Russian SODART telescope, which will be launched on the Russian spectrum-x-gamma (SXG) mission. The SXRP exploits the polarization dependence of Bragg reflection from a graphite crystal, and of Thomson scattering from a target of metallic lithium. The SXRP flight model (FM) was calibrated at a facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) equipped with polarized and unpolarized x-ray sources producing x-rays in the band pass for the graphite and lithium scatterers. By adjusting the orientation of the SXRP with respect to the incident x-ray beam, it was possible to simulate the converging beam from a SODART telescope and to measure the SXRP response to telescope pointing errors. In this paper, we describe the SXRP-FM calibration and present results for the graphite polarimeter.

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John A. Tomsick, Enrico Costa, J. Dwyer, Ronald F. Elsner, E. Ford, Philip E. Kaaret, Robert Novick, Andrea E. Santangelo, Eric H. Silver, Paolo Soffitta, Martin C. Weisskopf, and Klaus Ziock "Calibration of the Stellar X-Ray Polarimeter", Proc. SPIE 3114, EUV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Instrumentation for Astronomy VIII, (15 October 1997); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.283780

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