Development of a Monte Carlo Simulator for the Astro-E2 hard X-ray detector (HXD-II)

• Published in: IEEE transactions on nuclear science Vol. 52; no. 4; pp. 902 - 909
• Main Authors: Terada, Y., Watanabe, S., Ohno, M., Suzuki, M., Itoh, T., Takahashi, I., Sato, G., Murashima, M., Kawano, N., Uchiyama, Y., Kubo, S., Takahashi, T., Tashiro, M., Kokubun, M., Makishima, K., Kamae, T., Murakami, T., Nomachi, M., Fukazawa, Y., Yamaoka, K., Nakazawa, K., Yonetoku, D.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.08.2005; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Astronomical satellites; Counting circuits; Gamma ray detection; Gamma ray detectors; gamma-ray spectroscopy detectors; Monte Carlo; Monte Carlo methods; Payloads; Physics; Satellite broadcasting; simulation; Software packages; Spectroscopy; X-ray detectors; Japan
• ISSN: 0018-9499; 1558-1578
• DOI: 10.1109/TNS.2005.852681

The Hard X-ray Detector (HXD-II) is one of the scientific payloads on board the fifth Japanese cosmic X-ray satellite Astro-E2 , scheduled for launch in 2005. The HXD-II is designed to cover a wide energy range of 10-600 keV with a high sensitivity of about 10/sup -5/ cnt/s/cm/sup 2//keV. In order to derive the energy response of the sensor and to estimate the background, a Monte Carlo simulator based on the Geant4 toolkit is currently being developed. This paper describes the design concept of the HXD-II software package, including the analysis tools and the Monte Carlo simulator, and its verification through a comparison with actual data taken by pre-flight radio-isotope irradiation experiments, together with calculated outputs that can demonstrate the in-orbit performance of the HXD-II.