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Title: Modeling of proton-induced radioactivation background in hard X-ray telescopes: Geant4-based simulation and its demonstration by Hitomi ’s measurement in a low Earth orbit

Journal Article · · Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research. Section A, Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [2];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [8];  [2];  [9];  [6];  [10];  [11];  [6];  [12];  [9];  [12];  [13];  [14] more »;  [15];  [15];  [16];  [11];  [17];  [12];  [17];  [18];  [19];  [17];  [20];  [12];  [12];  [12];  [12];  [21];  [6];  [12];  [22];  [9];  [5];  [23];  [24];  [7];  [12];  [25];  [23];  [26];  [19];  [27] « less
  1. Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States); Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science, Saitama (Japan)
  2. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  3. Tokyo Univ. of Science, Chiba (Japan)
  4. Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States); SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  5. Hiroshima Univ., Hiroshima (Japan)
  6. Hiroshima Univ., Higashi-Hiroshima (Japan)
  7. Rikkyo Univ., Tokyo (Japan)
  8. The Univ. of Tokyo, Tokyo (Japan); Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Kanagawa (Japan)
  9. Kyoto Univ., Kyoto (Japan)
  10. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Kanagawa (Japan); Nagoya Univ., Aichi (Japan)
  11. Waseda Univ., Tokyo (Japan)
  12. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Kanagawa (Japan)
  13. Lab. APC, Paris (France); CEA Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette (France)
  14. Lab. APC, Paris (France)
  15. CEA Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette (France)
  16. RIKEN, Saitama (Japan)
  17. The Univ. of Tokyo, Tokyo (Japan)
  18. Yamagata Univ., Yamagata (Japan)
  19. Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science, Saitama (Japan)
  20. Tohoku Univ., Miyagi (Japan)
  21. Nagoya Univ., Nagoya (Japan)
  22. Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate Univ., Onnason Okinawa (Japan)
  23. Saitama Univ., Saitama (Japan)
  24. Shizuoka Univ., Shizuoka (Japan)
  25. Nagoya Univ., Aichi (Japan)
  26. Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo (Japan)
  27. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Hard X-ray astronomical observatories in orbit suffer from a significant amount of background due to radioactivation induced by cosmic-ray protons and/or geomagnetically trapped protons. Within the framework of a full Monte Carlo simulation, we present modeling of in-orbit instrumental background which is dominated by radioactivation. To reduce the computation time required by straightforward simulations of delayed emissions from activated isotopes, we insert a semi-analytical calculation that converts production probabilities of radioactive isotopes by interaction of the primary protons into decay rates at measurement time of all secondary isotopes. Therefore, our simulation method is separated into three steps: (1) simulation of isotope production, (2) semi-analytical conversion to decay rates, and (3) simulation of decays of the isotopes at measurement time. This method is verified by a simple setup that has a CdTe semiconductor detector, and shows a 100-fold improvement in efficiency over the straightforward simulation. To demonstrate its experimental performance, the simulation framework was tested against data measured with a CdTe sensor in the Hard X-ray Imager onboard the Hitomi X-ray Astronomy Satellite, which was put into a low Earth orbit with an altitude of 570 km and an inclination of 31°, and thus experienced a large amount of irradiation from geomagnetically trapped protons during its passages through the South Atlantic Anomaly. The simulation is able to treat full histories of the proton irradiation and multiple measurement windows. As a result, the simulation results agree very well with the measured data, showing that the measured background is well described by the combination of proton-induced radioactivation of the CdTe detector itself and thick Bi4Ge3O12 scintillator shields, leakage of cosmic X-ray background and albedo gamma-ray radiation, and emissions from naturally contaminated isotopes in the detector system.

Research Organization:
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-76SF00515; AC3-76SF00515; NNX15AM19G
OSTI ID:
1434673
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1548685
Journal Information:
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research. Section A, Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 891, Issue C; ISSN 0168-9002
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 14 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (17)

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In-Orbit Performance of the Hard X-Ray Detector on Board Suzaku journal January 2007
NuSTAR OBSERVATIONS OF THE BULLET CLUSTER: CONSTRAINTS ON INVERSE COMPTON EMISSION journal August 2014
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Geant4—a simulation toolkit
  • Agostinelli, S.; Allison, J.; Amako, K.
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 506, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0168-9002(03)01368-8
journal July 2003
Geant4 developments and applications journal February 2006
Recent developments in Geant4
  • Allison, J.; Amako, K.; Apostolakis, J.
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 835 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2016.06.125
journal November 2016
Development of an integrated response generator for Si/CdTe semiconductor Compton cameras
  • Odaka, Hirokazu; Sugimoto, Soichiro; Ishikawa, Shin-nosuke
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 624, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2009.11.052
journal December 2010
The Si/CdTe semiconductor camera of the ASTRO-H Hard X-ray Imager (HXI)
  • Sato, Goro; Hagino, Kouichi; Watanabe, Shin
  • Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, Vol. 831 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2016.03.038
journal September 2016
NASA/National Space Science Data Center trapped radiation models journal March 1994
Studies in Astronomical time Series Analysis. vi. Bayesian Block Representations journal February 2013
TRAPPED PROTON FLUXES AT LOW EARTH ORBITS MEASURED BY THE PAMELA EXPERIMENT journal January 2015
Geomagnetically trapped, albedo and solar energetic particles: Trajectory analysis and flux reconstruction with PAMELA journal August 2017
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NASA/National Space Science Data Center trapped radiation models journal March 1994
NuSTAR Observations of the Bullet Cluster: Constraints on Inverse Compton Emission text January 2014

Cited By (2)

Simulations of the SVOM/ECLAIRs dynamic background: a fast, accurate and general approach for wide-field hard X-ray instruments journal November 2019
Simulations of the SVOM/ECLAIRs Dynamic Background: A fast, accurate and general approach for wide-field hard X-ray instruments text January 2019

Figures / Tables (17)

Figure 1(p. 4)figure Figure 1
Table 1(p. 5)table Table 1
Figure 2(p. 6)figure Figure 2
Figure 3(p. 7)figure Figure 3
Figure 4(p. 7)figure Figure 4
Figure 5(p. 7)figure Figure 5
Figure 6(p. 8)figure Figure 6
Figure 7(p. 8)figure Figure 7
Table 2(p. 9)table Table 2
Figure 8(p. 10)figure Figure 8
Figure 9(p. 10)figure Figure 9
Table 3(p. 11)table Table 3
Table 4(p. 12)table Table 4
Figure 10(p. 13)figure Figure 10
Figure 11(p. 14)figure Figure 11
Figure 12(p. 15)figure Figure 12
Figure 13(p. 16)figure Figure 13

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Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
X-ray astronomy
In-orbit background
Radioactivation
Monte-Carlo simulation