We conducted a deep narrowband NB973 (FWHM = 200Å centered at 9755Å) survey of z = 7 Lyα emitters (LAEs) in the Subaru/XMM-Newton Deep Survey Field, using the fully depleted CCDs newly installed on the Subaru Telescope Suprime-Cam, which is twice more sensitive to z = 7 Lyα at ∼ 1µm than the previous CCDs. Reaching the depth 0.5 magnitude deeper than our previous survey in the Subaru Deep Field that led to the discovery of a z = 6.96 LAE, we detected three probable z = 7 LAE candidates. Even if all the candidates are real, the Lyα luminosity function (LF) at z = 7 shows a significant deficit from the LF at z = 5.7 determined by previous surveys. The LAE number and Lyα luminosity densities at z = 7 is ∼ 7.7-54% and ∼ 5.5-39% of those at z = 5.7 to the Lyα line luminosity limit of L(Lyα) 9.2 × 10 42 erg s −1 . This could be due to evolution of the LAE population at these epochs as a recent galaxy evolution model predicts that the LAE modestly evolves from z = 5.7 to 7. However, even after correcting for this effect of galaxy evolution on the decrease in LAE number density, the z = 7 Lyα LF still shows a deficit from z = 5.7 LF. This might reflect the attenuation of Lyα emission by neutral hydrogen remaining at the epoch of reionization and suggests that reionization of the universe might not be complete yet at z = 7. If we attribute the density deficit to reionization, the intergalactic medium (IGM) transmission for Lyα photons at z = 7 would be 0.4 ≤ T IGM Lyα ≤ 1, supporting the possible higher neutral fraction at the earlier epochs at z > 6 suggested by the previous surveys of z = 5.7-7 LAEs, z ∼ 6 quasars and z > 6 gamma-ray bursts.

The Hitomi (ASTRO-H) mission is the sixth Japanese X-ray astronomy satellite developed by a large international collaboration, including Japan, USA, Canada, and Europe. The mission aimed to provide the highest energy resolution ever achieved at E > 2 keV, using a microcalorimeter instrument, and to cover a wide energy range spanning four decades in energy from soft X-rays to gamma-rays. After a successful launch on 2016 February 17, the spacecraft lost its function on 2016 March 26, but the commissioning phase for about a month provided valuable information on the on-board instruments and the spacecraft

a b s t r a c tThe Soft Gamma-ray Detector (SGD) is one of the instrument payloads onboard ASTRO-H, and will cover a wide energy band (60-600 keV) at a background level 10 times better than instruments currently in orbit. The SGD achieves low background by combining a Compton camera scheme with a narrow field-of-view active shield. The Compton camera in the SGD is realized as a hybrid semiconductor detector system which consists of silicon and cadmium telluride (CdTe) sensors. The design of the SGD Compton camera has been finalized and the final prototype, which has the same configuration as the flight model, has been fabricated for performance evaluation. The Compton camera has overall dimensions of 12 cm  12 cm  12 cm, consisting of 32 layers of Si pixel sensors and 8 layers of CdTe pixel sensors surrounded by 2 layers of CdTe pixel sensors. The detection efficiency of the Compton camera reaches about 15% and 3% for 100 keV and 511 keV gamma rays, respectively. The pixel pitch of the Si and CdTe sensors is 3.2 mm, and the signals from all 13,312 pixels are processed by 208 ASICs developed for the SGD. Good energy resolution is afforded by semiconductor sensors and low noise ASICs, and the obtained energy resolutions with the prototype Si and CdTe pixel sensors are 1.0-2.0 keV (FWHM) at 60 keV and 1.6-2.5 keV (FWHM) at 122 keV, respectively. This results in good background rejection capability due to better constraints on Compton kinematics. Compton camera energy resolutions achieved with the final prototype are 6.3 keV (FWHM) at 356 keV and 10.5 keV (FWHM) at 662 keV, which satisfy the instrument requirements for the SGD Compton camera (better than 2%). Moreover, a low intrinsic background has been confirmed by the background measurement with the final prototype.

We have produced thick-foil and fine-pitch gas electron multipliers (GEMs) using a laser etching technique. To improve production yield we have employed a new material, Liquid Crystal Polymer, instead of polyimide as an insulator layer. The effective gain of the thick-foil GEM with a hole pitch of 140 µm, a hole diameter of 70 µm, and a thickness of 100 µm reached a value of 10 4 at an applied voltage of 720 V. The measured effective gain of the thick-foil and fine-pitch GEM (80 µm pitch, 40 µm diameter, and 100 µm thick) was similar to that of the thick-foil GEM. The gain stability was measured for the thick-foil and fine-pitch GEM, showing no significant increase or decrease as a function of elapsed time from applying the high voltage. The gain stability over 3 h of operation was about 0.5%. Gain mapping across the GEM showed a good uniformity with a standard deviation of about 4%. The distribution of hole diameters across the GEM was homogeneous with a standard deviation of about 3%. There was no clear correlation between the gain and hole diameter maps.