Simulation study of performance of the Very Large Area gamma-ray Space Telescope

Abstract

The Very Large Area gamma-ray Space Telescope (VLAST) is a mission concept proposed to detect gamma-ray photons through both the Compton scattering and electron-positron pair production mechanisms, enabling the detection of photons with energies ranging from MeV to TeV. This project aims to conduct a comprehensive survey of the gamma-ray sky from a low Earth orbit using an anti-coincidence detector, a tracker detector that also serves as a low energy calorimeter, and a high energy imaging calorimeter. We developed a Monte Carlo simulation application of the detector with the GEANT4 toolkit to evaluate the instrument performance including the effective area, angular resolution and energy resolution, as well as explored specific optimizations of the detector configuration. Our simulation-based analysis indicates that the VLAST's current design is physically feasible, with an acceptance larger than 10~${\mathrm{m}}^2\mathrm{sr}$ which is four times larger than Fermi-LAT, an energy resolution better than 2\% at 10~GeV, and an angular resolution better than 0.2 degrees at 10~GeV. The VLAST project is expected to make significant contribution to the field of gamma-ray astronomy and to enhance our understanding of the cosmos.

arXiv comment15 pages, 16 figures; Nuclear Science and Techniques in press

References in corpus (46)

• The Large Area Telescope on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Mission
• The ATLAS Simulation Infrastructure
• Potential Sensitivity of Gamma-Ray Burster Observations to Wave Dispersion in Vacuo
• Giant Gamma-ray Bubbles from Fermi-LAT: AGN Activity or Bipolar Galactic Wind?
• Detection of the Characteristic Pion-Decay Signature in Supernova Remnants
• Incremental Fermi Large Area Telescope Fourth Source Catalog
• Direct detection of a break in the teraelectronvolt cosmic-ray spectrum of electrons and positrons
• The AGILE Mission
• The DArk Matter Particle Explorer mission
• Fermi LAT Search for Internal Bremsstrahlung Signatures from Dark Matter Annihilation
• The 1st Fermi Lat Supernova Remnant Catalog
• A decade of Gamma-Ray Bursts observed by $Fermi$-LAT: The 2${}^{nd}$ GRB catalog
• Search for Gamma-ray Spectral Lines with the Fermi Large Area Telescope and Dark Matter Implications
• The e-ASTROGAM mission (exploring the extreme Universe with gamma rays in the MeV-GeV range)
• A $\gamma$-ray determination of the Universe's star-formation history
• GeV excess in the Milky Way: The Role of Diffuse Galactic gamma ray Emission template
• Propagation of cosmic rays in the AMS-02 era
• Dual MeV Gamma-Ray and Dark Matter Observatory -- GRAMS Project
• Millisecond pulsar interpretation of the Galactic center gamma-ray excess
• 130 GeV gamma-ray line and enhancement of $h\to \gamma \gamma$ in the Higgs triplet model plus a scalar dark matter
• The POLAR Gamma-Ray Burst Polarization Catalog
• A Pair Production Telescope for Medium-Energy Gamma-Ray Polarimetry
• The diffuse $\gamma$-ray background is dominated by star-forming galaxies
• Search for a gamma-ray line feature from a group of nearby Galaxy clusters with Fermi LAT Pass 8 data
• Lorentz invariance violation induced threshold anomaly versus very-high energy cosmic photon emission from GRB 221009A
• PANGU: A High Resolution Gamma-ray Space Telescope
• Search for gamma-ray spectral lines with the DArk Matter Particle Explorer
• Massive Argon Space Telescope (MAST): a concept of heavy time projection chamber for gamma-ray astronomy in the 100 MeV --- 1 TeV energy range
• Searching for spectral oscillations due to photon-axionlike particle conversion using the Fermi-LAT observations of bright supernova remnants
• Astrophysics: Extreme emission seen from $\gamma$-ray bursts
• The 130 GeV gamma-ray line and Sommerfeld enhancements
• The Likely Fermi detection of the supernova remnant SN 1006
• A Parameterized Energy Correction Method for Electromagnetic Showers in BGO-ECAL of DAMPE
• Revisiting the constraints on primordial black hole abundance with the isotropic gamma ray background
• GeV γ-ray Emission Detected by Fermi-LAT Probably Associated with the Thermal Composite Supernova Remnant Kesteven 41 in a Molecular Environment
• DAMPE silicon tracker on-board data compression algorithm
• Prospects for the detection of the prompt very-high-energy emission from $\gamma$-ray bursts with the High Altitude Detection of Astronomical Radiation experiment
• Gamma- and Cosmic-Ray Observations with the GAMMA-400 Gamma-Ray Telescope
• Fermi Study of gamma-ray Millisecond Pulsars: the Spectral Shape and Pulsed 25--200 GeV Emission from J0614-3329
• Using the Extragalactic Gamma-Ray Background to Constrain the Hubble Constant and Matter Density of the Universe
• COSI: From Calibrations and Observations to All-sky Images
• Charge reconstruction study of the DAMPE Silicon-Tungsten Tracker with ion beams
• Comparison of proton shower developments in the BGO calorimeter of the Dark Matter Particle Explorer between GEANT4 and FLUKA simulations
• Design of the readout electronics for the DAMPE Silicon Tracker detector
• An Unsupervised Machine Learning Method for Electron--Proton Discrimination of the DAMPE Experiment
• MeV Astrophysical Spectroscopic Surveyor (MASS): A Compton Telescope Mission Concept

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Observations of the Fermi bubbles and the Galactic center excess with the DArk Matter Particle Explorer
• Deciphering the spectral bumps of Galactic cosmic rays through gamma-ray observations of nearby molecular clouds