Background simulations for the wide field imager aboard the ATHENA X-ray Observatory

Steffen Hauf; Markus Kuster; Dieter H. H. Hoffmann; Philipp-Michael Lang; Stephan Neff; Maria Grazia Pia; Lothar Strüder

doi:10.1117/12.926482

27 September 2012 Background simulations for the wide field imager aboard the ATHENA X-ray Observatory

Steffen Hauf, Markus Kuster, Dieter H. H. Hoffmann, Philipp-Michael Lang, Stephan Neff, Maria Grazia Pia, Lothar Strüder

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 8443, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2012: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray; 84435J (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.926482
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2012, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Abstract

The ATHENA X-ray observatory was a European Space Agency project for a L-class mission. ATHENA was to be based upon a simplified IXO design with the number of instruments and the focal length of the Wolter optics being reduced. One of the two instruments, the Wide Field Imager (WFI) was to be a DePFET based focal plane pixel detector, allowing for high time and spatial resolution spectroscopy in the energy-range between 0.1 and 15 keV. In order to fulfill the mission goals a high sensitivity is essential, especially to study faint and extended sources. Thus a detailed understanding of the detector background induced by cosmic ray particles is crucial. During the mission design generally extensive Monte-Carlo simulations are used to estimate the detector background in order to optimize shielding components and software rejection algorithms. The Geant4 toolkit^1,2 is frequently the tool of choice for this purpose. Alongside validation of the simulation environment with XMM-Newton EPIC-pn and Space Shuttle STS-53 data we present estimates for the ATHENA WFI cosmic ray induced background including long-term activation, which demonstrate that DEPFET-technology based detectors are able to achieve the required sensitivity.

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Steffen Hauf, Markus Kuster, Dieter H. H. Hoffmann, Philipp-Michael Lang, Stephan Neff, Maria Grazia Pia, and Lothar Strüder "Background simulations for the wide field imager aboard the ATHENA X-ray Observatory", Proc. SPIE 8443, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2012: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 84435J (27 September 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.926482

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