3.8 Proceedings Paper

XL-Calibur, the Next-Generation Balloon-Borne Hard X-ray Polarimeter

Publisher

SPIE-INT SOC OPTICAL ENGINEERING
DOI: 10.1117/12.2560319

Keywords

X-ray light source; X-ray generator; X-ray beamline

Funding

  1. NASA APRA program [80NSSC18K0264]
  2. McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis
  3. NASA [80NSSC18K0264, NNX16AC42G, 2014B1092, 2016A1035, 2019B1221, 2020A1298, 2020A0746]
  4. JSPS KAKENHI [18K18767, 19H00696, 19H01908, 19H05609, 19K21886, 20H00176]
  5. Mitsubishi Foundation Research Grants in the Natural Sciences [201910033]
  6. JAXA/ISAS Science Program
  7. Swedish National Space Agency [199/18]
  8. Swedish Research Council [2016-04929]
  9. Swedish Research Council [2016-04929] Funding Source: Swedish Research Council
  10. Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [19H00696, 20H00176, 18K18767, 19H05609, 19K21886, 19H01908] Funding Source: KAKEN

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The paper introduces a second-generation balloon-borne hard X-ray polarimetry mission, XL-Calibur, which is set to fly from Sweden in 2022, following up on its predecessor's flight from the Antarctic. XL-Calibur utilizes a grazing incidence X-ray telescope and a focal plane detector unit to detect the polarization of high-energy astrophysical sources.
This paper introduces a second-generation balloon-borne hard X-ray polarimetry mission, XL-Calibur.(1) The XL-Calibur will follow up on the X-Calibur mission which was flown from Dec. 29, 2018 for a 2.5 days balloon flight from McMurdo (the Antarctic). X-ray polarimetry promises to give qualitatively new information about high-energy astrophysical sources, such as pulsars and binary black hole systems. The XL-Calibur contains a grazing incidence X-ray telescope with a focal plane detector unit that is sensitive to linear polarization. The telescope is very similar in design to the ASTRO-H HXT telescopes that has the world's largest effective area above 10 keV. XL-Calibur will use the same type of mirror. The detector unit combines a low atomic number Compton scatterer with a CdZnTe detector assembly to measure the polarization making use of the fact that polarized photons Compton scatter preferentially perpendicular to the electric field orientation. It also contains a CdZnTe imager at the bottom. The detector assembly is surrounded by a BGO anticoincidence shield. The pointing system with arcsecond accuracy will be achieved by the WASP (Wallops Arc Second Pointer) from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility. A first flight of the XL-Calibur is currently foreseen for 2022, flying from Sweden.

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