Detection of Low-Energy X-rays Using YSO Scintillation Crystal Arrays for GRB Experiments

Full list of authors: Kim, Minbin; Ripa, Jakub; Park, Il H.; Bogomolov, Vitaly; Brandt, Søren; Budtz-Jørgensen, Carl; Castro-Tirado, Alberto J.; Chang, Sheng-Hsiung; Chang, Yenyun; Chen, Chia Ray; Chen, C. -W.; Chen, Pisin; Connell, Paul; Eyles, Chris; Gaikov, Georgii; Hong, Gihan; Huang, Jian Jung; Huang, Ming-Huey Alfred; Jeong, Soomin; Kim, Jieun; Lee, Jik; Lim, Heuijin; Lin, Chih-Yang; Liu, Tsung-Che; Nam, Jiwoo; Panasyuk, Mikhail; Petrov, Vasily; Reglero, Victor; Rodrigo, Juana M.; Svertilov, Sergey; Vedenkin, Nikolay; Wang, Ming Zu; Yashin, Ivan.--This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.We developed an X-ray detector using 36 arrays, each consisting of a 64-pixellated yttrium oxyorthosilicate (YSO) scintillation crystal and a 64-channel multi-anode photomultiplier tube. The Xray detector was designed to detect X-rays with energies lower than 10 keV, primarily with the aim of localizing gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). YSO crystals have no intrinsic background, which is advantageous for increasing low-energy sensitivity. The fabricated detector was integrated into UBAT, the payload of the Ultra-Fast Flash Observatory (UFFO)/Lomonosov for GRB observation. The UFFO was successfully operated in space in a low-Earth orbit. In this paper, we present the responses of the X-ray detector of the UBAT engineering model identical to the flight model, using241 Am and55 Fe radioactive sources and an Amptek X-ray tube. We found that the X-ray detector can measure energies lower than 5 keV. As such, we expect YSO crystals to be good candidates for the X-ray detector materials for future GRB missions. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.This study was supported by grants from the Korean National Research Foundation (NRF-2017K1A4A3015188, NRF-2021R1A2B5B03002645, and NRF-2019H1D3A2A02060090). The Russian work was partially supported by ROSCOSMOS grants and by RFFI grant No. 13-02-12175 and No.15-35-21038 and support from the Development Program of Lomonosov Moscow State University is acknowledged. AJCT acknowledges support from the Spanish MINECO Projects AYA 2009-14000-C03-01/ESP and AYA2015-1718-R (including EU/FEDER funds). The authors thank Taiwan’s National Science Council Vanguard Program (100-2119-M-002-025) and Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) for the funding (104-2811-M-002-160). MBK acknowledges the support from NRF-2015-GPF.With funding from the Spanish government through the Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence accreditation SEV-2017-0709.Peer reviewe

Detection of Low-Energy X-rays Using YSO Scintillation Crystal Arrays for GRB Experiments

We developed an X-ray detector using 36 arrays, each consisting of a 64-pixellated yttrium oxyorthosilicate (YSO) scintillation crystal and a 64-channel multi-anode photomultiplier tube. The X-ray detector was designed to detect X-rays with energies lower than 10 keV, primarily with the aim of localizing gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). YSO crystals have no intrinsic background, which is advantageous for increasing low-energy sensitivity. The fabricated detector was integrated into UBAT, the payload of the Ultra-Fast Flash Observatory (UFFO)/Lomonosov for GRB observation. The UFFO was successfully operated in space in a low-Earth orbit. In this paper, we present the responses of the X-ray detector of the UBAT engineering model identical to the flight model, using 241Am and 55Fe radioactive sources and an Amptek X-ray tube. We found that the X-ray detector can measure energies lower than 5 keV. As such, we expect YSO crystals to be good candidates for the X-ray detector materials for future GRB missions