Speaker
Ms
Sarah Hanschke
(IAAT / University of Tuebingen)
Description
Orbital soft protons with energies from tens of keV to a few MeV can seriously degrade solid-state detectors in X-ray observatories. In order to improve and validate Geant4 simulations of soft proton grazing angle scattering in Wolter-type optics and to get a handle on the physical processes at work, measurements with eROSITA gold coated mirror samples have been performed at the accelerator facility in Tübingen in the past three years. Energy loss and scattering efficiencies have been investigated for incidence angles between 0.3 deg and 1.2 deg with proton energies around 250 keV, 500 keV, and 1 MeV.
A Geant4 physics process class has been implemented that reproduces the results of these measurements. This allows to assess the parameters of the scattered proton flux for a complete X-ray telescope and to estimate its contribution to the detector background and degradation. The code is currently under evaluation and will be refined once the new measurement data will be available.
The upcoming measurements will enhance the insights into the funneling behavior of astronomical X-ray optics by probing also the off-axis distribution of scattered protons and by extending the accessible angular range. Measurements of plane and curved mirror surfaces are planned, reusing the samples from eROSITA as well as testing new materials, e.g. silicon pore optics samples for ATHENA.
Primary author
Ms
Sarah Hanschke
(IAAT / University of Tuebingen)
Co-authors
Dr
Alejandro Guzmán
(IAAT - University of Tuebingen)
Prof.
Andrea Santangelo
(IAAT - University of Tuebingen)
Dr
Christoph Tenzer
(IAAT - University of Tuebingen)
Dr
Emanuele Perinati
(University of Tuebingen)
Dr
Sebastian Diebold
(IAAT - University of Tübingen)
