X-ray polarimetry is largely an unexplored area of an otherwise mature field of X-ray astronomy. Except for a few early attempts during the 1970s, no dedicated X-ray polarimeter has been flown during the past four decades. On the other hand, the scientific value of X-ray polarization measurement has been well known for a long time, and there has been significant technical progress in developing sensitive X-ray polarimeters in recent years. But there are no approved dedicated X-ray polarimetric experiments to be flown in the near future, so it is important to explore the polarimetric capabilities of other existing or planned instruments and examine whether they can provide significant astrophysical polarization measurements. In this paper, we present experimental results to show that the CZTI instrument onboard the forthcoming Indian astronomy mission, Astrosat, will be able to provide sensitive measurements of X-ray polarization in the energy range of 100−300 keV. CZTI will be able to constrain any intrinsic polarization greater than ∼40% for bright X-ray sources (>500 mCrab) within a short exposure of ∼100 ks with a 3-sigma confidence level. We show that this seemingly "modest" sensitivity can play a very significant role in addressing long pending questions, such as the contribution of relativistic jets to hard X-rays in black hole binaries and X-ray emission mechanism and geometry in X-ray pulsars.

AstroSat is a multi-wavelength satellite launched on 2015 September 28. The CZT Imager of AstroSat on its very first day of operation detected a long duration gamma-ray burst (GRB) namely GRB 151006A. Using the off-axis imaging and spectral response of the instrument, we demonstrate that CZT Imager can localise this GRB correct to about a few degrees and it can provide, in conjunction with Swift, spectral parameters similar to that obtained from Fermi /GBM. Hence CZT Imager would be a useful addition to the currently operating GRB instruments (Swift and Fermi ). Specifically, we argue that the CZT Imager will be most useful for the short hard GRBs by providing localisation for those detected by Fermi and spectral information for those detected only by Swift. We also provide preliminary results on a new exciting capability of this instrument: CZT Imager is able to identify Compton scattered events thereby providing polarisation information for bright GRBs. GRB 151006A, in spite of being relatively faint, shows hints of a polarisation signal at 100-300 keV (though at a low significance level). We point out that CZT Imager should provide significant time resolved polarisation measurements for GRBs that have fluence 3 times higher than that of GRB 151006A. We estimate that the number of such bright GRBs detectable by CZT Imager is 5 -6 per year. CZT Imager can also act as a good hard X-ray monitoring device for possible electromagnetic counterparts of Gravitational Wave events.

The Cadmium Zinc Telluride Imager (CZTI) is a high energy, wide-field imaging instrument on AstroSat. CZTI's namesake Cadmium Zinc Telluride detectors cover an energy range from 20 keV to > 200 keV, with 11% energy resolution at 60 keV. The coded aperture mask attains an angular resolution of 17 over a 4• .6 × 4• .6 (FWHM) field of view. CZTI functions as an open detector above 100 keV, continuously sensitive to GRBs and other transients in about 30% of the sky. The pixellated detectors are sensitive to polarisation above ∼ 100 keV, with exciting possibilities for polarisation studies of transients and bright persistent sources. In this paper, we provide details of the complete CZTI instrument, detectors, coded aperture mask, mechanical and electronic configuration, as well as data and products.