1. First flight of the X-ray polarimeter X-Calibur
- Author
-
Thomas Hams, M. Sasaki, Paul Dowkontt, Ram Cowsik, Ryan Endsley, Matthias Beilicke, Takashi Okajima, Henric Krawczynski, Scott Barthelmy, Fabian Kislat, Q. Guo, G. De Geronimo, Shigetaka Saji, Yoshito Haba, and Anna Zajczyk
- Subjects
Physics ,Photon ,business.industry ,Astrophysics::High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena ,Astrophysics::Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics ,Polarimetry ,Compton scattering ,Polarimeter ,X-ray telescope ,Astrophysics ,law.invention ,Telescope ,Optics ,Binary black hole ,law ,business ,Gamma-ray burst - Abstract
X-ray polarimetry promises to give qualitatively new information about high-energy astrophysical sources, such as binary black hole systems, micro-quasars, active galactic nuclei, and gamma-ray bursts. We designed, built and tested a hard X-ray polarimeter, X-Calibur, to be used in the focal plane of the balloon-borne InFOCμS grazing incidence X-ray telescope with the goal of observing astrophysical sources. X-Calibur combines a low-Z Compton scatterer with a CZT detector assembly to measure the polarization of 20–60 keV X-rays making use of the fact that polarized photons Compton scatter preferentially perpendicular to the electric field orientation. A 1-day test flight of the instrument was performed from Ft.Sumner, NM, in fall 2014. The sensitivity, performance and first results form the flight will be presented.
- Published
- 2015
- Full Text
- View/download PDF