Fabio Muleri,1,2 Paolo Soffitta,1 Ronaldo Bellazzini,3 Alessandro Brez,3 Enrico Costa,1 Sergio Fabiani,1 Massimo Frutti,1 Massimo Minuti,3 Maria Barbara Negri,4 Michele Pinchera,3 Alda Rubini,1 Gloria Spandre3
1Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica (Italy) 2Univ. di Roma Tor Vergata (Italy) 3Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (Italy) 4Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (Italy)
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The Gas Pixel Detector (GPD) is a new generation device which, thanks to its 50 μm pixels, is capable of imaging
the photoelectrons tracks produced by photoelectric absorption in a gas. Since the direction of emission of the
photoelectrons is strongly correlated with the direction of polarization of the absorbed photons, this device has
been proposed as a polarimeter for the study of astrophysical sources, with a sensitivity far higher than the
instruments flown to date. The GPD has been always regarded as a focal plane instrument and then it has been
proposed to be included on the next generation space-borne missions together with a grazing incidence optics.
Instead in this paper we explore the feasibility of a new kind of application of the GPD and of the photoelectric
polarimeters in general, i.e. an instrument with a large field of view. By means of an analytical treatment
and measurements, we verify if it is possible to preserve the sensitivity to the polarization for inclined beams,
opening the way for the measurement of X-ray polarization for transient astrophysical sources. While severe
systematic effects arise for inclination greater than about 20 degrees, methods and algorithms to control them
are discussed.
Fabio Muleri,Paolo Soffitta,Ronaldo Bellazzini,Alessandro Brez,Enrico Costa,Sergio Fabiani,Massimo Frutti,Massimo Minuti,Maria Barbara Negri,Michele Pinchera,Alda Rubini, andGloria Spandre
"The gas pixel detector as an x-ray photoelectric polarimeter with a large field of view", Proc. SPIE 7011, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2008: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 70112A (15 July 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.789621
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Fabio Muleri, Paolo Soffitta, Ronaldo Bellazzini, Alessandro Brez, Enrico Costa, Sergio Fabiani, Massimo Frutti, Massimo Minuti, Maria Barbara Negri, Michele Pinchera, Alda Rubini, Gloria Spandre, "The gas pixel detector as an x-ray photoelectric polarimeter with a large field of view," Proc. SPIE 7011, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2008: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 70112A (15 July 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.789621