Advanced Scintillator-Based Compton Telescope for Solar Flare Gamma-Ray Measurements
Abstract
A major goal of future Solar and Heliospheric Physics missions is the understanding of the particle acceleration processes taking place on the Sun. Achieving this understanding will require detailed study of the gamma-ray emission lines generated by accelerated ions in solar flares. Specifically, it will be necessary to study gamma-ray line ratios over a wide range of flare intensities, down to small C-class flares. Making such measurements over such a wide dynamic range, however, is a serious challenge to gamma-ray instrumentation, which must deal with large backgrounds for faint flares and huge counting rates for bright flares. A fast scintillator-based Compton telescope is a promising solution to this instrumentation challenge. The sensitivity of Compton telescopes to solar flare gamma rays has already been demonstrated by COMPTEL, which was able to detect nuclear emission from a C4 flare, the faintest such detection to date. Modern fast scintillators, such as LaBr3, and CeBr3, are efficient at stopping MeV gamma rays, have sufficient energy resolution (4% or better above 0.5 MeV) to resolve nuclear lines, and are fast enough (~15 ns decay times) to record at very high rates. When configured as a Compton telescope in combination with a modern organic scintillator, such as p-terphenyl, sub-nanosecond coincidence resolving time allows dramatic suppression of background via time-of-flight (ToF) measurements, allowing both faint and bright gamma-ray line flares to be measured. The use of modern light readout devices, such as silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs), eliminates passive mass and permits a more compact, efficient instrument. We have flown a prototype Compton telescope using modern fast scintillators with SiPM readouts on a balloon test flight, achieving good ToF and spectroscopy performance. A larger balloon-borne instrument is currently in development. We present our test results and estimates of the solar flare sensitivity of a possible full-scale instrument suitable for flight on long-duration balloon flights or on an Explorer satellite platform.
- Publication:
-
AAS/AGU Triennial Earth-Sun Summit
- Pub Date:
- April 2015
- Bibcode:
- 2015TESS....140314R