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A Fast Compton Telescope for Detection and Imaging of Gamma-Ray Line Flares Project

Summary

Type of release
a one-off release of a single dataset

Data Licence
Not Applicable

Content Licence
Creative Commons CCZero

Verification
automatically awarded

Release Date
9 April 2015
Modified Date
8 July 2015
Publishers
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Keywords
active, nasa-headquarters, project
Identifier
a-fast-compton-telescope-for-detection-and-imaging-of-gamma-ray-line-flares-project
Landing Page
http://techport.nasa.gov/view/10853
Maintainers
Peter Bloser hq-techport@mail.nasa.gov
Language
en-US

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Description

<p align="LEFT"> <font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">One of the major goals of high-energy solar physics, and therefore of the Solar and </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">Heliospheric Physics (SHP) Program, is a detailed understanding of the particle acceleration </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">processes taking place on the Sun during solar flares. Flares can accelerate electrons to tens of </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">MeV and ions to energies exceeding 1 GeV, as evidenced by the neutral radiation that can be </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">studied remotely. The intense scientific interest in understanding this process is evidenced by </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">the large number of wh ite papers dedicated to the topic that were submitted in response to the </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">current Heliophysics Decadal Survey. A recurring theme in many white papers is the central role </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">that new, sensitive observations of the </font><b><font face="TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT">gamma-ray line emissions </font></b><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">from flares must play in </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">disentangling the problem of acceleration and transport of energetic particles (Lin et al. 2010; </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">Shih et al. 2010; Desai et al. 2010). More specifically, to significantly advance the study of solar </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">flare particle acceleration, it will be necessary to  </font><b><font face="TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT">compare in detail the spatial, spectral, and </font></b><b><font face="TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT">temporal evolution of electron signatures  </font></b><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">(hard X-ray and gamma-ray continuum emission </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">from bremsstrahlung) </font><b><font face="TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT">and ion signatures </font></b><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">(gamma-ray lines and pion-decay continuum from </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">accelerated ions colliding with the solar atmosphere) </font><b><font face="TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT">over a wide dynamic range </font></b><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">of flare sizes </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">and intensities.</font></p> <p align="LEFT"> <font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT"><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">For the gamma-ray lines, comprehensive measurements require angular resolution of ~10 </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">arcsec or better at energies up to ~10 MeV, energy resolution of a few percent or better, and </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">sensitivity at least 10 times better than that of previous instruments. Making such complex </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">measurements over a large dynamic range presents a serious challenge to gamma-ray </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">instrumentation, which must deal with large backgrounds for faint flares and high count rates for </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">bright flares. In addition, future missions to study flare particle acceleration, such as the Solar </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">Eruptive Events (SEE) 2020 concept presented by Lin et al. (2010), will contain entire suites of </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">instruments to ensure that complementary measurements are made in a coordinated manner. </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">Unprecedented gamma-ray measurements must therefore be made without consuming the </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">spacecraft’s mass, power, and telemetry budgets.</font></font></p> <p align="LEFT"> <font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT"><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT"><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">Three recent technological developments potentially allow us to combine the abilities of </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">these pioneering instruments: 1) Recently developed scintillator materials, in particular LaCl </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT" size="1"><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT" size="1">3</font></font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">:Ce </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">and LaBr </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT" size="1"><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT" size="1">3</font></font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">:Ce, offer a far more attractive mix of stopping power, energy resolution, and fast time </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">response than NaI and BGO scintillators. Energy resolution better than 3% above 0.6 MeV and </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">timing resolution well below 500 ps are now well established. 2) Recently developed Silicon <font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">Photo-Multipliers (SiPMs) offer a compact, low-mass, and low-power alternative to PMTs. We </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">have already shown that detectors composed of LaBr </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT" size="1"><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT" size="1">3 </font></font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">scintillator coupled to SiPM readouts </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">perform well as gamma-ray spectrometers (Bloser et al. 2008, 2010a). 3) Newly available </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">compact arrays of SiPMs, with sensing elements typically 3 – 4 mm in size, promise the </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">additional ability to achieve fine spatial resolution within scintillators in a compact Anger </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">camera configuration. Gamma-ray detectors of this nature are currently being developed by the </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">medical imaging community (e.g., Schaart et al. 2009), and position resolution of 1 mm or better </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">has been demonstrated</font></font></font></font></p> <p align="LEFT">  </p> <p align="LEFT"> <font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT"><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT"><b><font face="TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT">We propose a program of instrument development and modeling to show that a fast </font></b><b><font face="TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT">Compton telescope based on an innovative combination of new scintillator detectors and </font></b><b><font face="TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT">light readout devices, combined with an imaging grid or mask, is a scientifically </font></b><b><font face="TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT">competitive solution to this instrumentation challenge  </font></b><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">In effect, we will attempt to combine </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">the best features of past solar gamma-ray instruments into an efficient, low-background, imaging </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">gamma-ray spectrometer. The RHESSI mission (Lin et al. 2002) made the first high-angularresolution </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">images at gamma-ray energies, adapting Fourier-synthesis methods previously used at </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">hard X-ray energies (e.g., the Yohkoh Hard X-ray Telescope; Kosugi et al. 1991) to image the </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">2.2 MeV neutron-capture line with a resolution of about 35 arcsec (Hurford et al. 2006). Earlier </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">gamma-ray spectrometers based on efficient inorganic scintillators, including those on the Solar </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">Maximum Mission (SMM; Forrest et al. 1980), Yohkoh (Yoshimori et al. 1992), and the </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (e.g., Murphy et al. 1993), made sensitive spectral </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">observations up to >10 MeV over a large range of flare intensities. The most sensitive gammaray </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">flare spectrometer of all was the COMPton TELescope (COMPTEL) on CGRO (Schönfelder </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">et al. 1993; Ryan & McConnell 1996). As a scintillator-based Compton telescope, COMPTEL </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">was able to dramatically suppress background using a fast coincidence, time-of-flight (ToF) </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">measurements, and coarse imaging ability. COMPTEL was able to detect nuclear emission from </font><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT">a C4 flare, the faintest such detection to date (Young et al. 2001).</font></font></font></p> <p>  </p> <p>  </p>


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