An x-ray polarimeter for HXMT mission

Enrico Costa; Ronaldo Bellazzini; Gianpiero Tagliaferri; Luca Baldini; Stefano Basso; Johan Bregeon; Alessandro Brez; Oberto Citterio; Vincenzo Cotroneo; Filippo Frontera; Massimo Frutti; Giorgio Matt; Massimo Minuti; Fabio Muleri; Giovanni Pareschi; Giuseppe Cesare Perola; Alda Rubini; Carmelo Sgro; Paolo Soffitta; Gloria Spandre

doi:10.1117/12.734536

26 October 2007 An x-ray polarimeter for HXMT mission

Enrico Costa, Ronaldo Bellazzini, Gianpiero Tagliaferri, Luca Baldini, Stefano Basso, Johan Bregeon, Alessandro Brez, Oberto Citterio, Vincenzo Cotroneo, Filippo Frontera, Massimo Frutti, Giorgio Matt, Massimo Minuti, Fabio Muleri, Giovanni Pareschi, Giuseppe Cesare Perola, Alda Rubini, Carmelo Sgro, Paolo Soffitta, Gloria Spandre

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 6686, UV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Space Instrumentation for Astronomy XV; 66860Z (2007) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.734536
Event: Optical Engineering + Applications, 2007, San Diego, California, United States

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.

Citation Download Citation

Enrico Costa, Ronaldo Bellazzini, Gianpiero Tagliaferri, Luca Baldini, Stefano Basso, Johan Bregeon, Alessandro Brez, Oberto Citterio, Vincenzo Cotroneo, Filippo Frontera, Massimo Frutti, Giorgio Matt, Massimo Minuti, Fabio Muleri, Giovanni Pareschi, Giuseppe Cesare Perola, Alda Rubini, Carmelo Sgro, Paolo Soffitta, and Gloria Spandre "An x-ray polarimeter for HXMT mission", Proc. SPIE 6686, UV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Space Instrumentation for Astronomy XV, 66860Z (26 October 2007); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.734536

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