Evaluation of the performance of a CdZnTe-based soft $\gamma$-ray detector for CubeSat payloads

Abstract

The low-energy $\gamma$-ray (0.1-30 MeV) sky has been relatively unexplored since the decommissioning of the COMPTEL instrument on the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO) satellite in 2000. However, the study of this part of the energy spectrum (the ``MeV gap") is crucial for addressing numerous unresolved questions in high-energy and multi-messenger astrophysics. Although several large MeV $\gamma$-ray missions like AMEGO and e-ASTROGAM are being proposed, they are predominantly in the developmental phase, with launches not anticipated until the next decade at the earliest. In recent times, there has been a surge in proposed CubeSat missions as cost-effective and rapidly implementable ``pathfinder" alternatives. A MeV CubeSat dedicated to $\gamma$-ray astronomy has the potential to serve as a demonstrator for future, larger-scale MeV payloads. This paper presents a $\gamma$-ray payload design featuring a CdZnTe crystal calorimeter module developed by IDEAS. We report the detailed results of simulations to assess the performance of this proposed payload and compare it with those of previous $\gamma$-ray instruments.

Submitted in Experimental Astronomy(Springer), 25 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (13)

• Multi-messenger Observations of a Binary Neutron Star Merger
• Giant Gamma-ray Bubbles from Fermi-LAT: AGN Activity or Bipolar Galactic Wind?
• Detection of 16 Gamma-Ray Pulsars Through Blind Frequency Searches Using the Fermi LAT
• The Spectrum and Morphology of the Fermi Bubbles
• A decade of Gamma-Ray Bursts observed by $Fermi$-LAT: The 2${}^{nd}$ GRB catalog
• Fermi Establishes Classical Novae as a Distinct Class of Gamma-Ray Sources
• The Third Fermi Large Area Telescope Catalog of Gamma-ray Pulsars
• Background for a gamma-ray satellite on a low-Earth orbit
• AMEGO: Exploring the Extreme Multimessenger Universe
• The First Fermi-LAT Solar Flare Catalog
• NuSTAR perspective on high-redshift MeV blazars
• Measurement of Galactic ${}^{26}$Al with the Compton Spectrometer and Imager
• Multiwavelength and Multimessenger Observations of Blazars and Theoretical Modeling: Blazars as Astrophysical Neutrino Sources