Abstract

We have been developing a Compton scatter polarimeter for measuring the linear polarization of hard X-rays (100-300 keV) from astrophysical sources. A laboratory prototype polarimeter has been used to successfully demonstrate the reliability of our Monte Carlo simulation code and to demonstrate our ability to generate a polarized photon source in the lab. Our design concept places a self-containedpolarimeter module on the front-end of a a 5-inch position sensitive PMT (PSPMT). We are currently working on the fabrication of a science model based on this PSPMT concept. Although the emphasis of our development effort is towards measuring hard X-rays from solar flares, our design has the advantage that it is sensitive over a rather large field-of-view (>1 steradian), a feature that makes it especially attractive for γ-ray burst studies

Department

Space Science Center, Physics

Publication Date

8-1999

Journal Title

IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science

Publisher

IEEE

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1109/23.790699

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Rights

c 1999 IEEE

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