Time projection chambers for gamma-ray astronomy

Abstract

The detection of photons with energies greater than a few tenths of an MeV, interacting via Compton scattering and/or pair production, faces a number of difficulties. The reconstruction of single-scatter Compton events can only determine the direction of the incoming photon to a cone, or an arc thereof and the angular resolution of pair-conversion telescopes is badly degraded at low energies. Both of these difficulties are partially overcome if the density of the interaction medium is low. Also no precise polarization measurement on a cosmic source has been obtained in that energy range to date. We present the potential of low-density high-precision homogeneous active targets, such as time-projection chambers (TPC) to provide an unambiguous photon direction measurement for Compton events, an angular resolution down to the kinematic limit for pair events, and the polarimetry of linearly polarized radiation.

arXiv commentInvited chapter for the Handbook of X-ray and Gamma-ray Astrophysics

References in corpus (34)

• Liquid Xenon Detectors for Particle Physics and Astrophysics
• Liquid noble gas detectors for low energy particle physics
• The first COMPTEL Source Catalogue
• Theoretical and simulation studies of characteristics of a Compton light source
• A novel large-volume Spherical Detector with Proportional Amplification read-out
• Observation of Anti-correlation between Scintillation and Ionization for MeV Gamma-Rays in Liquid Xenon
• The Si/CdTe semiconductor Compton camera of the ASTRO-H Soft Gamma-ray Detector (SGD)
• Development of an advanced Compton camera with gaseous TPC and scintillator
• A Pair Production Telescope for Medium-Energy Gamma-Ray Polarimetry
• MeV Gamma-Ray Imaging Detector with micro-TPC
• Observation of Diffuse Cosmic and Atmospheric Gamma Rays at Balloon Altitudes with an Electron-tracking Compton Camera
• Polarimetry of cosmic gamma-ray sources above e+e- pair creation threshold
• An Electron-Tracking Compton Telescope for a Survey of the Deep Universe by MeV gamma-rays
• Compton Imaging of MeV Gamma-Rays with the Liquid Xenon Gamma-Ray Imaging Telescope (LXeGRIT)
• Study in a beam test of the resolution of a Micromegas TPC with standard readout pads
• Establishment of Imaging Spectroscopy of Nuclear Gamma-Rays based on Geometrical Optics
• Detection of the 511 keV Galactic positron annihilation line with COSI
• Performance measurement of HARPO: a Time Projection Chamber as a gamma-ray telescope and polarimeter
• New readout and data-acquisition system in an electron-tracking Compton camera for MeV gamma-ray astronomy (SMILE-II)
• TPC in gamma-ray astronomy above pair-creation threshold
• First observation of MeV gamma-ray universe with bijective imaging spectroscopy using the Electron-Tracking Compton Telescope aboard SMILE-2+
• Negative Ion Drift and Diffusion in a TPC near 1 Bar
• The PANDA GEM-based TPC Prototype
• A Study of the LXeGRIT Detection Efficiency for MeV Gamma-Rays during the 2000 Balloon Flight Campaign
• A benign, low Z electron capture agent for negative ion TPCs
• gamma-ray telescopes using conversions to electron-positron pairs: event generators, angular resolution and polarimetry
• Performance of an optically read out time projection chamber with ultra-relativistic electrons
• Charged particle tracking without magnetic field: optimal measurement of track momentum by a Bayesian analysis of the multiple measurements of deflections due to multiple scattering
• High energy photon polarimeter for astrophysics
• First demonstration of a bubble-assisted Liquid Hole Multiplier operation in liquid argon
• HARPO, a gas TPC active target for high-performance $\gamma$-ray astronomy; demonstration of the polarimetry of MeV $\gamma$-rays converting to $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ pair
• Event Selection and Background Rejection in Time Projection Chambers Using Convolutional Neural Networks and a Specific Application to the AdEPT Gamma-ray Polarimeter Mission
• Electron drift in a large scale solid xenon
• On the Background Rate in the LXeGRIT Instrument during the 2000 Balloon Flight