Reducing the Athena WFI charged particle background: results from Geant4 simulations

Catherine E. Grant; Eric D. Miller; Marshall W. Bautz; Tanja Eraerds; Silvano Molendi; Jonathan Keelan; David Hall; Andrew D. Holland; Ralph Kraft; Esra Bulbul; Paul Nulsen; Steven Allen

doi:10.1117/12.2561124

13 December 2020 Reducing the Athena WFI charged particle background: results from Geant4 simulations

Catherine E. Grant, Eric D. Miller, Marshall W. Bautz, Tanja Eraerds, Silvano Molendi, Jonathan Keelan, David Hall, Andrew D. Holland, Ralph Kraft, Esra Bulbul, Paul Nulsen, Steven Allen

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 11444, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2020: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray; 1144442 (2020) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2561124
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2020, Online Only

Conference Poster

Abstract

One of the science goals of the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on ESA’s Athena X-ray observatory is to map hot gas structures in the universe, such as clusters and groups of galaxies and the intergalactic medium. These deep observations of faint diffuse sources require low background and the best possible knowledge of that background. The WFI Background Working Group is approaching this problem from a variety of directions. Here we present analysis of Geant4 simulations of cosmic ray particles interacting with the structures aboard Athena, producing signal in the WFI. We search for phenomenological correlations between these particle tracks and detected events that would otherwise be categorized as X-rays, and explore ways to exploit these correlations to flag or reject such events in ground processing. In addition to reducing the Athena WFI instrumental background, these results are applicable to understanding the particle component in any silicon-based X-ray detector in space.

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Catherine E. Grant, Eric D. Miller, Marshall W. Bautz, Tanja Eraerds, Silvano Molendi, Jonathan Keelan, David Hall, Andrew D. Holland, Ralph Kraft, Esra Bulbul, Paul Nulsen, and Steven Allen "Reducing the Athena WFI charged particle background: results from Geant4 simulations", Proc. SPIE 11444, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2020: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 1144442 (13 December 2020); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2561124

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