Performance of a multistep fluorescence-gated proportional counter for hard x-ray astronomy

Kurtis L. Dietz; Brian D. Ramsey; Martin C. Weisskopf

doi:10.1117/12.130685

8 October 1992 Performance of a multistep fluorescence-gated proportional counter for hard x-ray astronomy

Kurtis L. Dietz, Brian D. Ramsey, Martin C. Weisskopf

Proceedings Volume 1743, EUV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Instrumentation for Astronomy III; (1992) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.130685
Event: San Diego '92, 1992, San Diego, CA, United States

Abstract

The results from the first flight of our proportional counter in an imaging telescope led us to rebuild the detector in anticipation of a Fall 1992 flight. We have used a Penning gas mixture (xenon + 1% isobutylene) and introduced a preamplification region to improve the energy resolution. We have rebuilt the pressure vessel making novel use of molybdenum as the housing material in order to reduce the residual instrument background, particularly in the fluorescence-gated mode for which the detector design has been optimized. We have also increased the sensitive gas depth from 9 cm to 14 cm to further increase the sensitivity to both fluorescent pairs and conventional singles. Our calibrations have shown that the overall energy resolution of the detector has been enhanced by a factor of 2, and we predict that the sensitivity at float will increase by a factor of 3 in the 50 - 70 keV energy band.

Citation Download Citation

Kurtis L. Dietz, Brian D. Ramsey, and Martin C. Weisskopf "Performance of a multistep fluorescence-gated proportional counter for hard x-ray astronomy", Proc. SPIE 1743, EUV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Instrumentation for Astronomy III, (8 October 1992); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.130685

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