Development of the balloon-borne sub-MeV gamma-ray Compton camera using an electron-tracking gaseous TPC and a scintillation camera

K. Ueno, T. Mizumoto, K. Hattori, N. Higashi, S. Iwaki, S. Kabuki, Y. Kishimoto, S. Komura, H. Kubo, S. Kurosawa, Y. Matsuoka, K. Miuchi, K. Nakamura, H. Nishimura, J. Parker, Y. Sato, T. Sawano, A. Takada, T. Tanimori

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14 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We have developed an Electron-Tracking Compton Camera (ETCC) for use onboard a balloon to observe sub-MeV/MeV gamma rays from celestial objects. The ETCC is constructed with a three dimensional gaseous tracker for recoil electrons from Compton scattering, and GSO:Ce pixel scintillator arrays as absorber of the Compton-scattered gamma-ray. By using the ETCC, we can reconstruct the energy and direction of individual gamma rays. We have developed a prototype ETCC with a (30 cm)3 TPC, and tested its performance in the range of 356 - 835 keV in the laboratory. As the result, we succeeded in taking images of gamma ray sources and determined a detection efficiency of 9.0 × 10-6 and an effective area of 8.0 × 10-3 cm2 at 662 keV for the prototype ETCC. Furthermore, we developed a new power saving readout circuit for the scintillators that achieves the electric power consumption of 0.41 W/channel, an energy dynamic range of 81 - 1333 keV, and an energy resolution of 10.3% at full width at half maximum at 662 keV.

Original languageEnglish
Article numberC01088
JournalJournal of Instrumentation
Volume7
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2012 Jan

Keywords

  • Baloon instrumentation
  • Gamma telescopes
  • Micropattern gaseous detectors (MSGC, GEM, THGEM, RETHGEM, MHSP, MICROPIC, MICROMEGAS, InGrid, etc)
  • Scintillators, scintillation and light emission processes (solid, gas and liquid scintillators)

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