1. Design and Tests of the Hard X-ray Polarimeter X-Calibur
- Author
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M. Beilicke, R. Cowsik, P. Dowkontt, Q. Guo, F. Kislat, S. Barthelmy, T. Okajima, J. W. Mitchell, J. Schnittman, B. Zeiger, G. De Geronimo, M. G. Baring, A. Bodaghee, T. Miyazawa, K. D. Finkelstein, and H. Krawczynski
- Subjects
Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General) ,TA1-2040 - Abstract
X-ray polarimetry promises to give qualitatively new information bout high-energy astrophysical sources, such as binary black hole systems, micro-quasars, active galactic nuclei, and gamma-ray bursts. We designed, built and tested ahard X-ray polarimeter, X-Calibur, to be used in the focal plane of the InFOCuS grazing incidence hard X-ray telescope.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; in principal, a similar space-borne experiment could be operated in the 5−100 keV regime. X-Calibur achieves a high detection efficiency of order unity.
- Published
- 2014
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