86 research outputs found
Crystals for X/gamma-ray space telescopes
We will review the status of the Laue lens development of space astrophysics and the importance of the curved crystals for optimizing the lens performance
Expected performances of a Laue lens made with bent crystals
In the context of the LAUE project devoted to build a Laue lens prototype for
focusing celestial hard X-/soft gamma-rays, a Laue lens made of bent crystal
tiles, with 20 m focal length, is simulated. The focusing energy passband is
assumed to be 90--600 keV. The distortion of the image produced by the lens on
the focal plane, due to effects of crystal tile misalignment and radial
distortion of the crystal curvature, is investigated. The corresponding
effective area of the lens, its point spread function and sensitivity are
calculated and compared with those exhibited by a nominal Laue lens with no
misalignment and/or distortion. Such analysis is crucial to estimate the
optical properties of a real lens, in which the investigated shortcomings could
be present.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figure
Hard x-ray broad band Laue lenses (80 - 600 keV): building methods and performances
We present the status of the laue project devoted to develop a technology for
building a 20 meter long focal length Laue lens for hard x-/soft gamma-ray
astronomy (80 - 600 keV). The Laue lens is composed of bent crystals of Gallium
Arsenide (GaAs, 220) and Germanium (Ge, 111), and, for the first time, the
focusing property of bent crystals has been exploited for this field of
applications. We show the preliminary results concerning the adhesive employed
to fix the crystal tiles over the lens support, the positioning accuracy
obtained and possible further improvements. The Laue lens petal that will be
completed in a few months has a pass band of 80 - 300 keV and is a fraction of
an entire Laue lens capable of focusing X-rays up to 600 keV, possibly
extendable down to 20 - 30 keV with suitable low absorption crystal materials
and focal length. The final goal is to develop a focusing optics that can
improve the sensitivity over current telescopes in this energy band by 2 orders
of magnitude
The LAUE project for broadband gamma-ray focusing lenses
We present the LAUE project devoted to develop an advanced technology for
building a high focal length Laue lens for soft gamma--ray astronomy (80-600
keV). The final goal is to develop a focusing optics that can improve the
current sensitivity in the above energy band by 2 orders of magnitude.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, presented at the SPIE conference on "Optics for
EUV, X-ray, and Gamma-ray Astronomy". To be published in the Proceedings of
SPIE, vol.8147, 201
A Joint LINET and ISS-LIS View of Lightning Distribution over the Mt. Cimone Area within the GAMMA-FLASH Program
Opening the path to hard X-/soft gamma-ray focussing: The ASTENA-pathfinder mission
Hard X-/soft gamma-ray astronomy is a crucial field for transient, nuclear and multimessenger astrophysics. However, the spatial localization, imaging capabilities and sensitivity of the measurements are strongly limited for the energy range >70keV. To overcome these limitations, we have proposed a mission concept, ASTENA, submitted to ESA for its program “Voyage 2050”. We will report on a pathfinder of ASTENA, that we intend to propose to ASI as an Italian mission with international participation. It will be based on one of the two instruments aboard ASTENA: a Laue lens with 20m focal length, able to focus hard X-rays in the 50–700keV passband into a 3-d position sensitive focal plane spectrometer. The combination of the focussing properties of the lens and of the localization properties of the detector will provide unparalleled imaging and spectroscopic capabilities, thus enabling studies of phenomena such as gamma-ray bursts afterglows, supernova explosions, positron annihilation lines and many more
The LAUE project: latest developments
We present the status of the LAUE project devoted to develop a technology for building long focal length Laue lenses for hard X-/soft gamma-ray astronomy (80-600 keV). The Laue lens will be composed of bent crystals of Gallium Arsenide (GaAs, 220) and Germanium (Ge, 111), and, for the first time, the focusing property of bent crystals will be exploited for this field of applications. At the present the goal of the project is the building of a 20 m focal length Laue lens petal capable of focusing X-ray in the energy range 90-300 keV
New results on focusing of gamma-rays with Laue lenses
We report on new results on the development activity of broad band Laue
lenses for hard X-/gamma-ray astronomy (70/100-600 keV). After the development
of a first prototype, whose performance was presented at the SPIE conference on
Astronomical Telescopes held last year in Marseille (Frontera et al. 2008), we
have improved the lens assembling technology. We present the development status
of the new lens prototype that is on the way to be assembled.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figures, to be Published in SPIE Proceedings,
vol.7437-19, 200
Measurement of the non-linearity in the gamma-ray response of the GAGG:Ce inorganic scintillator
A characteristic of every inorganic scintillator crystal is its light yield,
i.e., the amount of emitted scintillation photons per unit of energy deposited
in the crystal. Light yield is known to be usually non-linear with energy,
which impacts the spectroscopic properties of the scintillator. Cerium-doped
gadolinium-aluminium-gallium garnet (GAGG:Ce) is a recently developed
scintillator with several interesting properties, which make it very promising
for space-based gamma-ray detectors, such as in the HERMES nanosatellite
mission. In this paper we report an accurate measurement of the GAGG:Ce
non-linearity in the 20-662 keV gamma-ray energy interval, using a setup
composed of three samples of GAGG:Ce crystals read out by Silicon Drift
Detectors (SDDs).Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in NIM
Development status of the LAUE project
We present the status of LAUE, a project supported by the Italian Space
Agency (ASI), and devoted to develop Laue lenses with long focal length (up to
100 meters), for hard X--/soft gamma--ray astronomy (80-600 keV). Thanks to
their focusing capability, the design goal is to improve the sensitivity of the
current instrumention in the above energy band by 2 orders of magnitude, down
to a few times photons/(cm s keV).Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, presented at the Space Telescopes and
Instrumentation Symposium in Amsterdam, 2012: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray
Conference. Published in the Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 8443, id.
84430B-84430B-9 (2012
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