Performance of Prototype Hard X-ray Polarimeter Utilizing Compton Scattering

概要

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In X-ray astronomy, various kinds of information on stellar objects have been obtained from energy spectrum, time variabilities, and images. Although the observation of polarization is also important, it has not been carried out for 25 years, because of the difficulty of developing a polarimeter with a high sensitivity. Thus, we have been developing a Compton-scattering-type hard X-ray polarimeter sensitive to the energy range from 40 to 300 keV, employing segmented plastic and CsI($\mathit{Tl}$) scintillators mounted on a flat-panel multianode photomutiplier (MAPMT). Constructing the prototype polarimeter and using polarized hard X rays of 80 keV, we carried out basic experiments to investigate the performance of our polarimeter. Moreover, we carried out computer simulations and confirmed that the results obtained by computer simulation are in good agreement with those obtained by experiment. Finally, it was found that the prototype polarimeter can obtain a modulation factor and a detection efficiency of ${\sim}40$ and ${\sim}20$%, respectively.
2006-01-15