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Simulation and photoelectron track reconstruction of soft X-ray polarimeter

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Abstract

The soft X-ray polarimeter (SXP) is a detector with a wide energy range, large area, and large field of view. A SXP will be mounted on the Chinese Space Station and will mainly focus on detecting the polarization of transient soft X-ray (2–10 keV) sources, especially gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). In this work, a polarimeter detector unit is taken as an example, and Geant4 and Garfield++ software are used to simulate the detection efficiency and track production. An improved track reconstruction algorithm is proposed and used to reconstruct two-dimensional images of the tracks. In this method, the initial emission angle of photoelectrons is reconstructed from the initial part of the track by shortening or extending the initial part of the track until the remaining track is straight, and the number of pixels is within an adjustable threshold. The modulation factor of the photoelectronic tracks after reconstruction reaches approximately 57% in the photon energy range of 7–10 keV.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Guangxi Key Laboratory for Relativistic Astrophysics, School of Physical Science and Technology, Guangxi University, Nanning, 530004, China

    Xue-Feng Huang, Hong-Bang Liu, ** Zhang, Bo Huang, Wen-** **e, Huan-Bo Feng, **-Chen Cai, **-Wen Liu, Jian-Yu Gu & En-Wei Liang

  2. PLAC, Key Laboratory of Quark and Lepton Physics (MOE), Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Zi-Li Li

  3. School of Physical Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bei**g, 100049, China

    Qian Liu

  4. Key Laboratory of Particle Astrophysics, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bei**g, 100049, China

    ** Li

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  1. Xue-Feng Huang
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Xue-Feng Huang, ** Zhang, Huan-Bo Feng, and **-Chen Cai. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Xue-Feng Huang and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xue-Feng Huang.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. U1731239, 12027803, 11851304, U1938201, 11575193, and U1732266), the Guangxi Science Foundation (Nos. 2018GXNSFGA281007, 2017AD22006, 2018JJA110048), and Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, CAS (No. QYZDB-SSW368 SLH039)

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Huang, XF., Liu, HB., Zhang, J. et al. Simulation and photoelectron track reconstruction of soft X-ray polarimeter. NUCL SCI TECH 32, 67 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-021-00903-0

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