Concept study of a small Compton polarimeter to fly on a cubesat

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¹Institute of Astronomy, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu City, Not Applicable, Taiwan China
²National Applied Research Labs, National Space Organization, Hsinchu City, Not Applicable, Taiwan China
³Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan China
⁴Laboratoire D'etude Des Phénomènes Cosmiques De Haute Energie (Lepche), Drf/irfu/dap//lepche, Saclay, France
⁵Department of Physics, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu City, Not Applicable, Taiwan China

Application of cubesats in astronomical observations has been getting more and more mature in recent years. Here we report a concept study of a small Compton polarimeter to fly on a cubesat for observing polarization of soft gamma-rays from a black-hole X-ray binary, Cygnus X-1. Polarization states provide very useful diagnostics on the emission mechanism and the origin of those gamma rays. In our study, we conducted Monte Carlo simulations to study the performance of three models of this small polarimeter. Silicon detectors and cerium bromide scintillators were employed in this study. We estimated Compton efficiency at different energies of this small Compton telescope, and its minimum detectable polarization degree when flying in a low earth orbit to observe Cyg X-1 with different observing time.

Chien-Ying Yang

National Tsing Hua University