12–17 Oct 2015
Trieste - Italy
Europe/Rome timezone

Caliste-MM, a new soft X-ray spectro-polarimeter based on gas detector with outer and contactless electronics

13 Oct 2015, 08:45
20m
Oceania (Trieste - Italy)

Oceania

Trieste - Italy

Congress Centre Stazione Marittima Molo Bersaglieri, 3 34123 Trieste Italy
Board: 7
Oral contribution New Developments in MPDGs Contributed talks

Speaker

Mr Paul Serrano (CEA)

Description

Performing X-ray polarimetry of astrophysical sources is a topic of growing interest, with only a few flying experiments dedicated to it so far. For soft X-rays sources detection from 1 keV to few tens of keV, the best technique certainly consists in using the photoelectric effect, which is the dominant phenomenon at those energies in gaseous detectors. One of the main issues of such detectors is their reliability in space as gaseous detectors and their associated front-end electronics are sensitive to sparks caused by cosmic rays. To overcome this limitation, we investigate the opportunity of building a new spectro-polarimeter with outer and contactless radiation hard readout electronics, placed outside the gas chamber. To perform this, we used a Micromegas detector with a resistive anode deposited on a ceramic plate, the so-called Piggyback Micromegas. The signal is then transmitted by capacitive effect to the outer electronics. The readout electronics in question inherits from Caliste-HD, a fine pitch 3D detector module initially designed for semi-conductor applications. In this talk, we present the different parts of our experimental set-up as well as recent results obtained by illuminating our prototype with a 55-Fe source. In addition to the optimization of the detector's parameters, we also present the first spectrum of a soft X-ray gaseous detector with outer and contactless electronics, and the first evidence of polarimetric possibility with such detector, making a step forward in the field of soft X-rays spectro-polarimeter.

Primary author

Co-authors

Dr David Attié (CEA/IRFU) Dr Esther Ferrer-Ribas (CEA/IRFU) Dr Fabien Janneau (CEA/IRFU) Dr Olivier Limousin (CEA/IRFU) Dr Thomas Papaevangelou (CEA/IRFU)

Presentation materials