The Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE): technical overview II

O’Dell, Stephen L.; Attinà, Primo; Baldini, Luca; Barbanera, M.; Baumgartner, W. H.; Bellazzini, R.; Bladt, Jeff; Bongiorno, Stephen D.; Brez, A.; Cavazzuti, E.; Citraro, Saverio; Costa, E.; Deininger, William D.; Monte, E. Del; Dietz, Kurtis L.; Lalla, N. Di; Donnarumma, I.; Elsner, Ronald F.; Fabiani, Sergio; Ferrazzoli, Riccardo; Guy, Larry; Kalinowski, William; Kaspi, V. M.; Kelley, Anthony R.; Kolodziejczak, Jeffrey J.; Latronico, L.; Lefevre, Carlo; Lucchesi, Leonardo; Manfreda, Alberto; Marshall, Herman L.; Masciarelli, James; Matt, Giorgio; Minuti, M.; Muleri, Fabio; Nasimi, Hikmat; Nuti, Alessio; Orsini, Leonardo; Osborne, Darren; Perri, M.; Pesce-Rollins, Melissa; Peterson, Colin; Pinchera, Michele; Puccetti, S.; Ramsey, Brian D.; Ratheesh, Ajay; Romani, Roger W.; Santoli, Francesco; Sciortino, Andrea; Sgrò, C.; Smith, Brian T.; Spandre, G.; Soffitta, P.; Tennant, Allyn F.; Tobia, Antonino; Trois, A.; Wedmore, Jeffrey; Weisskopf, Martin C.; Xie, Fei; Zanetti, Francesco; Alexander, Cheryl D.; Allen, D. Zachery; Amici, Fabrizio; Antoniak, Spencer; Bonino, R.; Borotto, Fabio; Breeding, Shawn; Brienza, Daniele; Bygott, H. Kyle; Caporale, Ciro; Cardelli, Claudia; Ceccanti, M.; Centrone, Mauro; Persio, Giuseppe Di; Evangelista, Y.; Ferrie, MacKenzie; Footdale, Joseph; Forsyth, Brent; Foster, Michelle; Gunji, Shuichi; Gurnee, Eli; Hibbard, Grant; Johnson, Sandra R.; Kelly, Eric; Kilaru, Kiranmayee; Monaca, Fabio La; Roy, Shelley Le; Loffredo, Pasqualino; Magazzù, G.; Marengo, Marco; Marrocchesi, Alessandra; Massaro, F.; McCracken, Jeffery; McEachen, Michael E.; Mereu, Paolo; Mitchell, Scott; Mitsuishi, Ikuyuki; Morbidini, Alfredo; Mosti, Federico; Negro, Michela; Oppedisano, C.; Pacheco, Richard; Paggi, A.; Pavelitz, Steven D.; Pentz, Christina; Piazzola, Raffaele; Porter, Brad; Profeti, A.; Ranganathan, Jaganathan; Rankin, John; Root, Noah; Rubini, A.; Ruswick, Stephanie; Sánchez, J.; Scalise, E.; Schindhelm, Sarah; Speegle, Chet O.; Tamagawa, Toru; Tardiola, Marcello; Walden, Amy L.; Weddendorf, Bruce; Welch, David

doi:10.1117/12.2530646

Cited by 8 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Indeed, a single significant polarimetric measurement exists in the soft X-ray band, dating back to the flight of a Bragg polarimeter on-board OSO-8 more than 40 years ago ( [1]), which measured a linear polarization degree for the Crab Nebula of (19.2 ± 1.0)% at 2.6 keV. Things are expected to change in the near future, thanks to the forthcoming Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission [2], which will be entirely dedicated to X-ray polarimetry. Selected in January 2017 by NASA as its next SMEX (SMall EXplorer1) mission IXPE is funded by a partnership between NASA and ASI.2 It is scheduled for launch in mid 2021 and will operate for two years, plus one of possible extension, allowing the polarimetric observation of dozens of celestial objects in the 2-8 keV energy band.…”

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The Gas Pixel Detetcor for the IXPE mission

Manfreda¹

2020

J. Inst.

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A: Measuring the polarization of the light coming from celestial sources provides a powerful tool to investigate their internal structure, as well as to study the physics at work in the emission processes. However, due to the technical challenges it presents, X-ray polarimetry is still quite undeveloped compared to other branches of astronomy, with the only significant measurement ever performed dating back to more than 40 years ago. The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), the next mission of the NASA SMall EXplorer program, is aimed at curtailing such a gap. Scheduled for launch in 2021, it will observe for the first time the polarization in the soft X-ray band (2-10 keV) of dozens of astrophysical objects such as black holes, active galactic nuclei, supernova remnants, magnetars and pulsar wind nebulae. At the very heart of the concept of IXPE lays the latest generation of a technology developed by INFN over the last twenty years, the Gas Pixel Detector (GPD). It is an innovative gas detector based on the photo-electric effect, which is able to image with high resolution the short tracks produced by photo-electrons of few keV in order to extract the relevant observables for imaging, spectroscopy and polarimetry. I will describe the development and design of the Gas Pixel Detector and discuss its most critical capabilities in relation to the scientific program of the IXPE mission.

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confidence: 99%