Across the soft gamma-ray regime: utilizing simultaneous detections in the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) and the Background and Transient Observer (BTO) to understand astrophysical transients

Hannah C. Gulick; Eliza Neights; Samer Al Nussirat; Claire Tianyi Chen; Kaylie Ching; Cassandra Dove; Alyson Joens; Carolyn Kierans; Hubert Liu; Israel Martinez; Tomas Mician; Shunsaku Nagasawa; Shreya Nandyala; Isabel Schmidtke; Derek Shah; Andreas Zoglauer; Kazuhiro Nakazawa; Tadayuki Takahashi; Juan-Carlos Martinez Oliveros; John A. Tomsick

doi:10.1117/12.3020606

21 August 2024 Across the soft gamma-ray regime: utilizing simultaneous detections in the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) and the Background and Transient Observer (BTO) to understand astrophysical transients

Hannah C. Gulick, Eliza Neights, Samer Al Nussirat, Claire Tianyi Chen, Kaylie Ching, Cassandra Dove, Alyson Joens, Carolyn Kierans, Hubert Liu, Israel Martinez, Tomas Mician, Shunsaku Nagasawa, Shreya Nandyala, Isabel Schmidtke, Derek Shah, Andreas Zoglauer, Kazuhiro Nakazawa, Tadayuki Takahashi, Juan-Carlos Martinez Oliveros, John A. Tomsick

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 13093, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2024: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray; 130932J (2024) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3020606
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2024, Yokohama, Japan

Abstract

The Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) is a NASA funded Small Explorer (SMEX) mission slated to launch in 2027. COSI will house a wide-field gamma-ray telescope designed to survey the entire sky in the 0.2-5 MeV range. Using germanium detectors, the instrument will provide imaging, spectroscopy, and polarimetry of astrophysical sources with excellent energy resolution and degree-scale localization capabilities. In addition to the main instrument, COSI will fly with a student collaboration project known as the Background and Transient Observer (BTO). BTO will extend the COSI bandpass to energies lower than 200 keV, thus enabling spectral analysis across the shared band of 30 keV–2 MeV range. The BTO instrument will consist of two NaI scintillators and student-designed readout electronics. Using spectral information from both the COSI and BTO instruments, physics such as the energy peak turnover in gamma-ray bursts, the characteristics of magnetar flares, and the event frequency of a range of transient phenomena will be constrained. In this paper, we present the expected science returnables from BTO and comment on the shared returnables from the COSI and BTO missions. We include simulations of gamma-ray bursts, magnetar giant flares, and terrestrial gamma-ray flashes using BTO’s spectral response. Additionally, we estimate BTO’s gamma-ray burst detection rate and find that BTO will detect ∼100–150 gamma-ray bursts per year, with at least 10% of the events being sGRB.

Conference Presentation

(2024) Published by SPIE. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

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Hannah C. Gulick, Eliza Neights, Samer Al Nussirat, Claire Tianyi Chen, Kaylie Ching, Cassandra Dove, Alyson Joens, Carolyn Kierans, Hubert Liu, Israel Martinez, Tomas Mician, Shunsaku Nagasawa, Shreya Nandyala, Isabel Schmidtke, Derek Shah, Andreas Zoglauer, Kazuhiro Nakazawa, Tadayuki Takahashi, Juan-Carlos Martinez Oliveros, and John A. Tomsick "Across the soft gamma-ray regime: utilizing simultaneous detections in the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) and the Background and Transient Observer (BTO) to understand astrophysical transients", Proc. SPIE 13093, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2024: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 130932J (21 August 2024); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3020606

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