A magnetic diverter for charged particle background rejection in the SIMBOL-X telescope

D. Spiga; V. Fioretti; A. Bulgarelli; E. Dell'Orto; L. Foschini; G. Malaguti; G. Pareschi; G. Tagliaferri; A. Tiengo

doi:10.1117/12.789917

15 July 2008 A magnetic diverter for charged particle background rejection in the SIMBOL-X telescope

D. Spiga, V. Fioretti, A. Bulgarelli, E. Dell'Orto, L. Foschini, G. Malaguti, G. Pareschi, G. Tagliaferri, A. Tiengo

Proceedings Volume 7011, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2008: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray; 70112Y (2008) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.789917
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2008, Marseille, France

Abstract

Minimization of charged particle background in X-ray telescopes is a well known issue. Charged particles (chiefly protons and electrons) naturally present in the cosmic environment constitute an important background source when they collide with the X-ray detector. Even worse, a serious degradation of spectroscopic performances of the X-ray detector was observed in Chandra and Newton-XMM, caused by soft protons with kinetic energies ranging between 100 keV and some MeV being collected by the grazing-incidence mirrors and funneled to the detector. For a focusing telescope like SIMBOL-X, the exposure of the soft X-ray detector to the proton flux can increase significantly the instrumental background, with a consequent loss of sensitivity. In the worst case, it can also seriously compromise the detector duration. A well-known countermeasure that can be adopted is the implementation of a properly-designed magnetic diverter, that should prevent high-energy particles from reaching the focal plane instruments of SIMBOL-X. Although Newton-XMM and Swift-XRT are equipped with magnetic diverters for electrons, the magnetic fields used are insufficient to effectively act on protons. In this paper, we simulate the behavior of a magnetic diverter for SIMBOL-X, consisting of commercially-available permanent magnets. The effects of SIMBOL-X optics is simulated through GEANT4 libraries, whereas the effect of the intense required magnetic fields is simulated along with specifically-written numerical codes in IDL.

Citation Download Citation

D. Spiga, V. Fioretti, A. Bulgarelli, E. Dell'Orto, L. Foschini, G. Malaguti, G. Pareschi, G. Tagliaferri, and A. Tiengo "A magnetic diverter for charged particle background rejection in the SIMBOL-X telescope", Proc. SPIE 7011, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2008: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 70112Y (15 July 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.789917

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