The Large Area Telescope

Conference · Tue Nov 13 04:00:00 EST 2007 · AIP Conf.Proc.921:8-12,2007

OSTI ID:919802

Michelson, Peter F

The Large Area Telescope (LAT), one of two instruments on the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) mission, is an imaging, wide field-of-view, high-energy pair-conversion telescope, covering the energy range from {approx}20 MeV to more than 300 GeV. The LAT is being built by an international collaboration with contributions from space agencies, high-energy particle physics institutes, and universities in France, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the United States. The scientific objectives the LAT will address include resolving the high-energy gamma-ray sky and determining the nature of the unidentified gamma-ray sources and the origin of the apparently isotropic diffuse emission observed by EGRET; understanding the mechanisms of particle acceleration in celestial sources, including active galactic nuclei, pulsars, and supernovae remnants; studying the high-energy behavior of gamma-ray bursts and transients; using high-energy gamma-rays to probe the early universe to z {ge} 6; and probing the nature of dark matter. The components of the LAT include a precision silicon-strip detector tracker and a CsI(Tl) calorimeter, a segmented anticoincidence shield that covers the tracker array, and a programmable trigger and data acquisition system. The calorimeter's depth and segmentation enable the high-energy reach of the LAT and contribute significantly to background rejection. The aspect ratio of the tracker (height/width) is 0.4, allowing a large field-of-view and ensuring that nearly all pair-conversion showers initiated in the tracker will pass into the calorimeter for energy measurement. This paper includes a description of each of these LAT subsystems as well as a summary of the overall performance of the telescope.

• Research Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-76SF00515
• OSTI ID: 919802
• Report Number(s): SLAC-REPRINT-2007-233
• Conference Information: Journal Name: AIP Conf.Proc.921:8-12,2007
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
ASPECT RATIO
Astrophysics
Instrumentation
ASTRO
INST
DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEMS
ENERGY RANGE
GAMMA ASTRONOMY
HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS
NONLUMINOUS MATTER
SUPERNOVAE
TELESCOPES