Tetsuichi Kishishita

In-orbit performance of the hard X-ray detector on board Suzaku

The in-orbit performance and calibration of the Hard X-ray Detector (HXD) on board the X-ray astronomy satellite Suzaku are described. Its basic performances, including a wide energy bandpass of 10–600keV, energy resolutions of ∼ 4keV (FWHM) at 40keV and ∼ 11% at 511keV, and a high background rejection efficiency, have been confirmed by extensive in-orbit calibrations. The long-term gains of PIN-Si diodes have been stable within 1% for half a year, and those of scintillators have decreased by 5–20%. The residual non-X-ray background of the HXD is the lowest among past non-imaging hard X-ray instruments in energy ranges of 15–70 and 150–500keV. We provide accurate calibrations of energy responses, angular responses, timing accuracy of the HXD, and relative normalizations to the X-ray CCD cameras using multiple observations of the Crab Nebula.

Study of Nonthermal Emission from SNR RX J1713.7–3946 with Suzaku

We present results obtained from a series of observations of the supernova remnant RX J1713.7–3946 by Suzaku. Hard X-rays have been detected up to ~40 keV. The hard X-ray spectra are described by a power law with photon indices of ~3.0, which is larger than those below 10 keV. The combination of the spatially integrated XIS and HXD spectra clearly reveals a spectral cutoff which is linked to the maximum energy of accelerated electrons. The broadband coverage of Suzaku allows us to derive, for the first time, the energy spectrum of parent electrons in the cutoff region. The cutoff energy in the X-ray spectrum indicates that the electron acceleration in the remnant proceeds close to the Bohm diffusion limit. We discuss the implications of the spectral and morphological properties of the Suzaku data in the context of the origin of nonthermal emission. The Suzaku X-ray and H.E.S.S. gamma-ray data together hardly can be explained within a pure leptonic scenario. Moreover, the leptonic models require a weak magnetic field, which is inconsistent with the recently discovered X-ray filamentary structures and their short-term variability. The hadronic models with strong magnetic fields provide reasonable fits to the observed spectra, but require special arrangements of parameters to explain the lack of thermal X-ray emission. For morphology studies, we compare the X-ray and TeV gamma-ray surface brightness. We confirm the previously reported strong correlation between X-rays and TeV gamma rays. At the same time, the Suzaku data reveal a deviation from the general tendency, namely, the X-ray emission in the western rims appears brighter than expected from the average X-ray to gamma-ray ratio.

Development of the HXD-II wide-band all-sky monitor onboard Astro-E2

The hard X-ray detector (HXD-II) is one of the three scientific instruments onboard Japanese X-ray astronomy satellite Astro-E2 scheduled to be launched in 2005. This mission is very unique in a point of having a lower background than any other past missions in the 10-600 keV range. In the HXD-II, the large and thick BGO crystals are used as active shields for particle and gamma-ray background to the main detector. They have a wide field of view of ~2pi and a large effective area of 400 cm2 even at 1 MeV. Hence, the BGO shields have been developed as a wide-band all-sky monitor (WAM) with a broadband coverage of 50-5000 keV. In this paper, overall design and performance of the HXD-II/WAM based on the results of preflight calibration tests carried out in June 2004 are described. By irradiating various radio isotopes with the WAM flight model, we verified that it had comparable capabilities with other gamma-ray burst detectors

LONG-TERM STABILITY OF NONTHERMAL X-RAY MODULATION IN THE GAMMA-RAY BINARY LS 5039

We report on long-term stability of X-ray modulation apparently synchronized with an orbital period of 3.9 days in the γ-ray binary LS 5039. Recent observations with the Suzaku satellite in the year 2007, which continuously covered more than one orbital period, have provided us with detailed characterization of X-ray flux and spectral shape as a function of orbital phase. Motivated by the results from Suzaku, we have re-analyzed the X-ray data obtained with ASCA, XMM-Newton, and Chandra between 1999 and 2005, to investigate long-term behavior of LS 5039 in the X-ray band. We found that the modulation curves in 1999-2007 are surprisingly stable. Even fine structures in the light curves such as spikes and dips are found to be quite similar from one orbit to another. The spectral characteristics observed in the past are consistent with those seen with Suzaku for some orbital phase segments. We suggest that magnetohydrodynamical collisions between the relativistic outflow from a compact object and the stellar wind from the O star explain the clock-like nonthermal X-ray emission over eight years through remarkably stable production of high-energy particles near the binary system.

DEPFET Active Pixel Detectors for a Future Linear

The DEPFET collaboration develops highly granular, ultra-transparent active pixel detectors for high-performance vertex reconstruction at future collider experiments. The characterization of detector prototypes has proven that the key principle, the integration of a first amplification stage in a detector-grade sensor material, can provide a comfortable signal to noise ratio of over 40 for a sensor thickness of 50-75 μm. ASICs have been designed and produced to operate a DEPFET pixel detector with the required read-out speed. A complete detector concept is being developed, including solutions for mechanical support, cooling, and services. In this paper, the status of the DEPFET R & D project is reviewed in the light of the requirements of the vertex detector at a future linear e+e- collider.

e^{+}e^{-}

Abstract An improved SOI-MAPS (Silicon On Insulator Monolithic Active Pixel Sensor) for ionizing radiation based on thick-film High Voltage SOI technology (HV-SOI) has been developed. Similar to existing Fully Depleted SOI-based (FD-SOI) MAPS, a buried silicon oxide inter-dielectric (BOX) layer is used to separate the CMOS electronics from the handle wafer which is used as a depleted charge collection layer. FD-SOI MAPS suffers from radiation damage such as transistor threshold voltage shifts due to charge traps in the oxide layers and charge states created at the silicon oxide boundaries (back gate effect). The X-FAB 180-nm HV-SOI technology offers an additional isolation by deep non-depleted implant between the BOX layer and the active circuitry which mitigates this problem. Therefore we see in this technology a high potential to implement radiation-tolerant MAPS with fast charge collection property. The design and measurement results from a first prototype are presented including charge collection in neutron irradiated samples.

Collider

A front-end ASIC with spectroscopic capability was developed to construct a prototype CdTe pixel detector for future use in focusing hard X-ray telescopes. The ASIC is designed for a hybrid configuration, where each CdTe sensor pixel is vertically connected to a corresponding pixel cell fabricated in the readout ASIC. The readout chip consists of a 12 × 12 matrix of identical 270×270 μm2 pixel cells, and was implemented with TSMC 0.35 μm CMOS technology. The low noise performance achieved an equivalent noise charge distribution of 50 ±10 e- . A CdTe pixel detector was mounted on the ASIC using an In/Au-stud bump-bonding technique. The detector was operated in self-trigger mode, and showed good spectral performance with energy resolution of 870 eV (FWHM) at 59.5 keV.

A Monolithic Active Pixel Sensor for ionizing radiation using a 180 nm HV-SOI process

Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS) have been developed since the late 1990s based on silicon substrates with a thin epitaxial layer (thickness of 10–15 μm) in which charge is collected on an electrode, albeit by disordered and slow diffusion rather than by drift in a directed electric field. As a consequence, the signal of these conventional MAPS is small (≈1000 e−) and the radiation tolerance is limited. In this paper, the development of a fully Depleted Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (DMAPS) based on a high resistivity substrate allowing the creation of a fully depleted detection volume is presented. This concept overcomes the inherent limitations of charge collection by diffusion in the standard MAPS designs. We present results from a prototype chip EPCB01 designed in a commercial 150 nm CMOS technology. The technology provides a thin (≈50 μm) high resistivity n-type silicon substrate as well as an additional deep p-well which allows to integrate full CMOS circuitry inside the pixel. Different matrix types with several variants of collection electrodes and pixel electronics have been implemented. Measurements of the analog performance of this first implementation of DMAPS pixels are presented.

Development of Low-Noise Front-End ASIC for Hybrid CdTe Pixel Detectors

The supernova remnant (SNR) RX J0852-4622 (Vela Jr., G266.6-1.2) is one of the most important SNRs for investigating the acceleration of multi-TeV particles and the origin of Galactic cosmic rays because of its strong synchrotron X-ray and TeV gamma-ray emission, which show a shell-like morphology similar to each other. Using the XMM-Newton archival data consisting of multiple pointing observations of the northwestern rim of the remnant, we investigate the spatial properties of the nonthermal X-ray emission as a function of distance from an outer shock wave. All X-ray spectra are well reproduced by an absorbed power-law model above 2 keV. It is found that the spectra show gradual softening from a photon index 2.56 in the rim region to 2.96 in the interior region. We show that this radial profile can be interpreted as a gradual decrease of the cutoff energy of the electron spectrum due to synchrotron cooling. By using a simple spectral evolution model that includes continuous synchrotron losses, the spectral softening can be reproduced with the magnetic field strength in the post-shock flow to less than several tens of uG. If this is a typical magnetic field in the SNR shell, gamma-ray emission would be accounted for by inverse Compton scattering of high-energy electrons that also produce the synchrotron X-ray emission. Future hard X-ray imaging observations with Nustar and ASTRO-H and TeV gamma-ray observations with the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will allow to us to explore other possible explanations of the systematic softening of the X-ray spectra.

DMAPS: a fully depleted monolithic active pixel sensor—analog performance characterization

We have constructed a Monte Carlo simulation base for the radiation environment of the Suzaku X-ray observatory satellite. The system consists of an object-oriented analysis framework used for real-data analysis, the Geant4 toolkit, an interface that allows the users a transparent usage of Geant4 components through the framework and classes that are used to build the simulation by a collaboration among different geometry maintainer and detector developer groups. As a demonstration, the geometry of the Hard X-ray Detector, which is one of the Suzaku detectors, is constructed using the framework and a comparison between the simulation output with the actual data is shown.