Lecturer: Prof. Toru Tanimori (Kyoto) Date: 2010-05-17 10:30 Place: Aniara
Observation of Celestial and Atmospheric MeV-Gamma-Rays using a Wide Field of View Electron Tracking Compton Camera with Balloon Borne Experiment
Prof. Toru Tanimori
Department of Physics, Faculty of Science
Kyoto University
Japan
Abstract
Recently high energy gamma-ray astronomy has become a very promising field in astronomy. On the other hands, in the Sub-Mev and MeV regions, there still remain many unobserved interesting celestial objects such as black holes. To explore this energy range, we have developed Electron Tracking Compton Camera (ETCC) consisting of a gaseous Time projection Chamber (TPC) based on the micro pixel gas counter (micro-PIC) and Scintillator pixels. By measuring the 3D-track of a recoil electron in TPC, ETCC can measure the direction of incident gamma-rays photon by photon with a 3str wide field of view, and provides both a good background rejection and an angular resolution of ~1degree at 1MeV (FWHM). ETCC with a 1x1x0.5m size will be a good candidate for wide band measurement on 0.1-50MeV gamma rays by single detector. Our final goal is the all-sly survey with several ten times better sensitivities of COMPTEL between 100keV to 100MeV using above large ETCC in space. We already carried out the observation of celestial sub-MeV gamma rays using with a small ETCC with a balloon (Sub-MeV gamma ray Imaging Loaded-on-balloon Experiment: SMILE) in 2006, and obtained 400 photons of diffuse cosmic and atmosphere gamma rays from 0.1 to 1MeV in 3 hours observation. Now we are constructing a large ETCC with a 40x40x40cm size for the next balloon experiment to catch gamma-rays from the Crab in several hours observation.
In addition, I would like to mention about the capability to find a high-z Gamma-Ray Bursts beyond z>10 by detecting MeV gamma rays from GRB by ETCC.
Created 2010-04-12 13:11:00 by Mats Holmström Last changed 2010-04-15 08:47:35 by Mats Holmström
