Instruments of RT-2 experiment onboard CORONAS-PHOTON and their test and evaluation IV: background simulations using GEANT-4 toolkit

Abstract

Hard X-ray detectors in space are prone to background signals due to the ubiquitous cosmic rays and cosmic diffuse background radiation that continuously bombards the satellites which carry the detectors. In general, the background intensity depends on the space environment as well as the material surrounding the detectors. Understanding the behavior of the background noise in the detector is very important to extract the precise source information from the detector data. In this paper, we carry out Monte Carlo simulations using the GEANT-4 toolkit to estimate the prompt background noise measured with the detectors of the RT-2 Experiment onboard the CORONAS-PHOTON satellite.

Solar gamma-ray spectrometer GRIS onboard the International Space Station

“…Based on analysis of Natalya-2M measurements and similar investigation of RT-2 background (CORONAS-PHOTON mission) (Sarkar et al, 2011) we conclude that the activation enhances background count rate by about two times in the energy range up to 6-10 MeV for both detectors.…”

LECX: a cubesat experiment to detect and localize cosmic explosions in hard X-rays

“…Therefore, in order to foresee the performance of LECX in orbit and its sensitivity to cosmic explosions, we need to have a good estimate of the background radiation the detectors will measure. We have calculated this using the well-known GEANT4 package (Agostinelli et al 2003;Sarkar et al 2011). Details of our procedure to calculate the background of an instrument from angle-dependent spectra of photons and particles in space can be found in Castro et al (2016).…”

Instruments of RT-2 experiment onboard CORONAS-PHOTON and their test and evaluation II: RT-2/CZT payload

“…It consists of three main detector payloads, namely RT-2/S, RT-2/G (both NaI(Tl)/CsI(Na) scintillator-Phoswich detectors) and RT-2/CZT (solid-state imaging detector) along with one processing electronics device, RT-2/E. Detailed descriptions of the Phoswich detectors and processing electronic device are given in Debnath et al (2010) and Sreekumar et al (2010) and the background simulations of the detectors using GEANT-4 toolkit are presented in Sarkar et al (2010).…”

“…It consists of three main detector payloads, namely RT-2/S, RT-2/G (both NaI(Tl)/CsI(Na) scintillator-Phoswich detectors) and RT-2/CZT (solid-state imaging detector) along with one processing electronics device, RT-2/E. Detailed descriptions of the Phoswich detectors and processing electronic device are given in Debnath et al (2010) and Sreekumar et al (2010) and the background simulations of the detectors using GEANT-4 toolkit are presented in Sarkar et al (2010).The RT-2/CZT payload consists of two different types of imaging detectors: three CZT (Cadmium Zinc Telluride) detectors and one CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) detector, arranged in a configuration of 2 x 2 array. The entire detector assembly (CZT and CMOS) sits below a collimator (∼32 cm height) with two different types of masking devices, namely Coded Aperture Mask (CAM) and Fresnel Zone Plate (FZP).…”