Recovering Photon Spectra from Simulated IMPRESS Data

The Impulsive Phase Rapid Energetic Solar Spectrometer (IMPRESS) is an NSF-funded 3U CubeSat under development at the University of Minnesota SmallSat Research Laboratory in collaboration with Montana State University, Southwest Research Institute, and UC Santa Cruz. The objective of the IMPRESS mission is to perform X-ray spectroscopy of both hard and soft X-rays produced during solar flares. From the results of this X-ray spectroscopy, we will explore constraints on flare acceleration timescales and demonstrate the utility of our high-energy radiation detector.

To analyze the spectra of X-rays taken by IMPRESS, we will need to reconstruct the physical photon spectra emitted by the solar flares from the measured photon counts. This can be done by performing statistical fits of the spectra of photon counts created by our X-ray spectrometers, which will require knowledge of the specific detector response. By employing the spectral fitting software SunXspex, as well as Geant4 for simulating the IMPRESS spectral response, we gauge our capability to reconstruct the initial photon spectra, the results of which will be presented in this poster.