CdTe twin-scale wide-field imager for hard-x-ray and soft-gamma-ray astrophysics

Ezio Caroli; John Buchan Stephen; Natalia Auricchio; Giuseppe Bertuccio; Guido Di Cocco; Ariano Donati; Waldes Dusi; Pietro Gallina; Gianni Landini; Marco Sampietro

doi:10.1117/12.366539

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22 October 1999 CdTe twin-scale wide-field imager for hard-x-ray and soft-gamma-ray astrophysics

Ezio Caroli; John Buchan Stephen; Natalia Auricchio; Giuseppe Bertuccio; Guido Di Cocco; Ariano Donati; Waldes Dusi; Pietro Gallina; Gianni Landini; Marco Sampietro

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Proceedings Volume 3765, EUV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Instrumentation for Astronomy X; (1999) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.366539
Event: SPIE's International Symposium on Optical Science, Engineering, and Instrumentation, 1999, Denver, CO, United States

Abstract

Current space instrumentation has confirmed that the energy band between 10 keV and a few MeV is a very important astrophysical region. This is mostly due to the variety of emitting objects with different spatial distributions and variability time scales, and in particular, to the number of transient phenomena whose nature is still very unclear. In order to fulfil the observational requirements in this energy range and taking into account the opportunities given by small/medium size missions we propose to construct a compact wide field telescope based on a thick CdTe position sensitive spectrometer and a twin scale coded mask. In this paper we describe the instrument concept as it was designed for the International Space Station Alpha: an array of CdTe crystal constructed by the replication of a basic linear module. Each linear module has a low noise and power dissipation integrated front end electronics of which we describe the functionality and some results from prototypes. We also present an evaluation of the performance achievable with such a high energy telescope in terms of imaging performance, polarimetric capabilities and sensitivity. Furthermore we describe current developments, in particular on CdTe linear arrays and low noise, low power consumption integrated front-end electronics.

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Ezio Caroli, John Buchan Stephen, Natalia Auricchio, Giuseppe Bertuccio, Guido Di Cocco, Ariano Donati, Waldes Dusi, Pietro Gallina, Gianni Landini, and Marco Sampietro "CdTe twin-scale wide-field imager for hard-x-ray and soft-gamma-ray astrophysics", Proc. SPIE 3765, EUV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Instrumentation for Astronomy X, (22 October 1999); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.366539

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