Abstract

Progress in high-energy gamma-ray science has been dramatic since the launch of INTEGRAL, AGILE and FERMI. These instruments, however, are not optimized for observations in the medium-energy (~0.3< Eγ < ~200 MeV) regime where many astrophysical objects exhibit unique, transitory behavior, such as spectral breaks, bursts, and flares. We outline some of the major science goals of a medium-energy mission. These science goals are best achieved with a combination of two telescopes, a Compton telescope and a pair telescope, optimized to provide significant improvements in angular resolution and sensitivity. In this paper we describe the design of the Advanced Energetic Pair Telescope (AdEPT) based on the Three-Dimensional Track Imager (3-DTI) detector. This technology achieves excellent, mediumenergy sensitivity, angular resolution near the kinematic limit, and gamma-ray polarization sensitivity, by high resolution 3-D electron tracking. We describe the performance of a 30×30×30 cm3 prototype of the AdEPT instrument.

Department

Space Science Center, Physics

Publication Date

7-29-2010

Journal Title

SPIE Proceedings

Publisher

SPIE

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1117/12.857298

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Rights

© (2010) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering.

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