GBM: a gamma-ray burst monitor for GLAST

Giselher G. Lichti; Michael S. Briggs; Roland Diehl; Gerald J. Fishman; Richard Marc Kippen; Chryssa Kouveliotou; Charles A. Meegan; William S. Paciesas; Robert S. Preece; Volker Schoenfelder; Andreas von Kienlin

doi:10.1117/12.461174

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11 March 2003 GBM: a gamma-ray burst monitor for GLAST

Giselher G. Lichti, Michael S. Briggs, Roland Diehl, Gerald J. Fishman, Richard Marc Kippen, Chryssa Kouveliotou, Charles A. Meegan, William S. Paciesas, Robert S. Preece, Volker Schoenfelder, Andreas von Kienlin

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Proceedings Volume 4851, X-Ray and Gamma-Ray Telescopes and Instruments for Astronomy; (2003) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.461174
Event: Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation, 2002, Waikoloa, Hawai'i, United States

Abstract

One of the scientific objectives of the GLAST mission is the study of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) which will be measured by the Large-Area Telescope, the main instrument of GLAST, in the energy range from ~20 MeV to ~300 GeV. In order to extend the energy measurement towards lower energies a secondary instrument, the GLAST Burst Monitor (GBM) will measure GRBs from ~10 keV to ~25 MeV and will thus allow the investigation of the relation between the keV and the MeV-GeV emission from GRBs. The GBM consists of 12 circular NaI crystal discs and 2 cylindrical BGO crystals. The NaI crystals are optimized for gamma radiation from ~10 keV to ~1 MeV and the BGO crystals from ~150 keV to ~25 MeV. The NaI crystals are oriented in such a way that the measured relative counting rates allow a rapid determination of the position of a gamma-ray burst within a wide FoV of ~8.6 sr. This position will be communicated within seconds to the LAT which may then be reoriented to observe the long-lasting high-energy gamma-ray emission from GRBs. This will allow the exploration of the unknown aspects of the high-energy burst emission and their connection with the well-known low-energy emission. Another important feature of the GBM is its high time resolution of ~10 microseconds for time-resolved gamma-ray spectroscopy.

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Giselher G. Lichti, Michael S. Briggs, Roland Diehl, Gerald J. Fishman, Richard Marc Kippen, Chryssa Kouveliotou, Charles A. Meegan, William S. Paciesas, Robert S. Preece, Volker Schoenfelder, and Andreas von Kienlin "GBM: a gamma-ray burst monitor for GLAST", Proc. SPIE 4851, X-Ray and Gamma-Ray Telescopes and Instruments for Astronomy, (11 March 2003); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.461174

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