The Gamma-Ray Large-Area Space Telescope: An Astro-Particle Mission to Explore the High-Energy Gamma-Ray Sky
The Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) is a space mission that will detect photons from the gamma ray sky, in the rich yet poorly explored high energy band between 20MeV and 1TeV. Main instrument on board is the Large Area Telescope (LAT), a gamma-ray pair-conversion telescope, that will measure direction and energy of incoming photons by means of a very large (11.000 sensors), low pitch (228 {micro}m) Silicon strip Tracker and an imaging CsI e.m. calorimeter, supported in the rejection of charged particles background by an outer, segmented Anti-Coincidence Detector built with plastic scintillators. The superior angular resolution of the LAT, coupled to its very large field of view, results in a sensitivity advance of a factor 30 or more with respect to previously flown instruments. This will allow GLAST to locate currently unresolved gamma ray sources and to detect potential new classes of sources. Study of the residual gamma ray background will have a crucial role in connection to cosmological models, supersymmetric dark matter and relics of exotic particle decay searches. An accurate spectroscopy of all gamma ray emitters will be possible with the high energy resolution of the calorimeter, improving our knowledge of the mechanisms that power the cores of blazars and AGNs, and enabling tens of different pulsar emission models. The GLAST mission will have the instrumental capabilities to locate and analyze sources of cosmic rays and investigate on their acceleration mechanism. As for transient phenomena studies, like the spectacular GRBs, known to be the most energetic natural events, GLAST is in a prominent position. This is due to the minimum detection dead time (<100 {micro}s), typical of the silicon detectors used for the LAT tracker, and to the increased field of view and alert capabilities of the second GLAST instrument, the Gamma Burst Monitor (GBM), essentially conceived as a fast transients trigger for the more accurate observations from the LAT and from other space and earth missions sensitive to other wavelengths. In this paper we give an overview of the many physics goals and potential reach of the GLAST observatory, we describe in detail the detector design and performances and report on the status of the LAT tracker construction.
- Research Organization:
- SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-76SF00515
- OSTI ID:
- 958662
- Report Number(s):
- SLAC-REPRINT-2009-104; TRN: US1000302
- Journal Information:
- Nucl.Instrum.Meth.A572:500-502,2007, Conference: Prepared for 10th Pisa Meeting on Advanced Detectors: Frontier Detectors for Frontier Physics, La Biodola, Elba, Italy, 21-27 May 2006
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
ACCELERATION
CHARGED PARTICLES
CONSTRUCTION
COSMOLOGICAL MODELS
DEAD TIME
ENERGY RESOLUTION
INTERNAL PAIR PRODUCTION
NONLUMINOUS MATTER
PARTICLE DECAY
PHOTONS
PLASTIC SCINTILLATORS
PULSARS
RESOLUTION
SILICON
SPECTROSCOPY
TELESCOPES
TRANSIENTS
WAVELENGTHS
Instrumentation
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