23 research outputs found
AstroPix: novel monolithic active pixel silicon sensors for future gamma-ray telescopes
Space-based gamma-ray telescopes such as the Fermi Large Area Telescope have used single sided silicon strip detectors to track secondary charged particles produced by primary gamma-rays with high resolution. At the lower energies targeted by keV-MeV telescopes, two dimensional position information within a single detector is required for event reconstruction - especially in the Compton regime. This work describes the development of monolithic CMOS active pixel silicon sensors - AstroPix - as a novel technology for use in future gamma-ray telescopes. Based upon sensors (ATLASPix) designed for use in the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider, AstroPix has the potential to maintain high performance while reducing noise with low power consumption. This is achieved with the dual detection and readout capabilities in each CMOS pixel. The status of AstroPix development and testing, as well as outlook for future testing and application, will be presented
Catching Element Formation In The Act
Gamma-ray astronomy explores the most energetic photons in nature to address
some of the most pressing puzzles in contemporary astrophysics. It encompasses
a wide range of objects and phenomena: stars, supernovae, novae, neutron stars,
stellar-mass black holes, nucleosynthesis, the interstellar medium, cosmic rays
and relativistic-particle acceleration, and the evolution of galaxies. MeV
gamma-rays provide a unique probe of nuclear processes in astronomy, directly
measuring radioactive decay, nuclear de-excitation, and positron annihilation.
The substantial information carried by gamma-ray photons allows us to see
deeper into these objects, the bulk of the power is often emitted at gamma-ray
energies, and radioactivity provides a natural physical clock that adds unique
information. New science will be driven by time-domain population studies at
gamma-ray energies. This science is enabled by next-generation gamma-ray
instruments with one to two orders of magnitude better sensitivity, larger sky
coverage, and faster cadence than all previous gamma-ray instruments. This
transformative capability permits: (a) the accurate identification of the
gamma-ray emitting objects and correlations with observations taken at other
wavelengths and with other messengers; (b) construction of new gamma-ray maps
of the Milky Way and other nearby galaxies where extended regions are
distinguished from point sources; and (c) considerable serendipitous science of
scarce events -- nearby neutron star mergers, for example. Advances in
technology push the performance of new gamma-ray instruments to address a wide
set of astrophysical questions.Comment: 14 pages including 3 figure
The Compton Spectrometer and Imager
The Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) is a NASA Small Explorer (SMEX)
satellite mission in development with a planned launch in 2027. COSI is a
wide-field gamma-ray telescope designed to survey the entire sky at 0.2-5 MeV.
It provides imaging, spectroscopy, and polarimetry of astrophysical sources,
and its germanium detectors provide excellent energy resolution for emission
line measurements. Science goals for COSI include studies of 0.511 MeV emission
from antimatter annihilation in the Galaxy, mapping radioactive elements from
nucleosynthesis, determining emission mechanisms and source geometries with
polarization measurements, and detecting and localizing multimessenger sources.
The instantaneous field of view for the germanium detectors is >25% of the sky,
and they are surrounded on the sides and bottom by active shields, providing
background rejection as well as allowing for detection of gamma-ray bursts and
other gamma-ray flares over most of the sky. In the following, we provide an
overview of the COSI mission, including the science, the technical design, and
the project status.Comment: 8 page
The cosipy library: COSI's high-level analysis software
The Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) is a selected Small Explorer
(SMEX) mission launching in 2027. It consists of a large field-of-view Compton
telescope that will probe with increased sensitivity the under-explored MeV
gamma-ray sky (0.2-5 MeV). We will present the current status of cosipy, a
Python library that will perform spectral and polarization fits, image
deconvolution, and all high-level analysis tasks required by COSI's broad
science goals: uncovering the origin of the Galactic positrons, mapping the
sites of Galactic nucleosynthesis, improving our models of the jet and emission
mechanism of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and
detecting and localizing gravitational wave and neutrino sources. The cosipy
library builds on the experience gained during the COSI balloon campaigns and
will bring the analysis of data in the Compton regime to a modern open-source
likelihood-based code, capable of performing coherent joint fits with other
instruments using the Multi-Mission Maximum Likelihood framework (3ML). In this
contribution, we will also discuss our plans to receive feedback from the
community by having yearly software releases accompanied by publicly-available
data challenges
All-sky Medium Energy Gamma-ray Observatory: Exploring the Extreme Multimessenger Universe
The All-sky Medium Energy Gamma-ray Observatory (AMEGO) is a probe class
mission concept that will provide essential contributions to multimessenger
astrophysics in the late 2020s and beyond. AMEGO combines high sensitivity in
the 200 keV to 10 GeV energy range with a wide field of view, good spectral
resolution, and polarization sensitivity. Therefore, AMEGO is key in the study
of multimessenger astrophysical objects that have unique signatures in the
gamma-ray regime, such as neutron star mergers, supernovae, and flaring active
galactic nuclei. The order-of-magnitude improvement compared to previous MeV
missions also enables discoveries of a wide range of phenomena whose energy
output peaks in the relatively unexplored medium-energy gamma-ray band
AstroPix: novel monolithic active pixel silicon sensors for future gamma-ray telescopes
Space-based γ-ray telescopes such as the Fermi Large Area Telescope have used single sided silicon strip detectors to track secondary charged particles produced by primary γ-rays with high resolution. At the lower energies targeted by keV-MeV telescopes, two dimensional position information within a single detector is required for event reconstruction—especially in the Compton regime. This work describes the development of monolithic CMOS active pixel silicon sensors—AstroPix—as a novel technology for use in future γ-ray telescopes. Based upon sensors (ATLASPix) designed for use in the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider, AstroPix has the potential to maintain high performance while reducing noise with low power consumption. This is achieved with the dual detection and readout capabilities in each CMOS pixel. The status of AstroPix development and testing, as well as outlook for future testing and application, will be presented