Performance of the ASTRO-E hard X-ray detector

Abstract

This paper summarizes the design and performance of the hard X-ray detector constructed for the ASTRO-E satellite. The detector utilizes the GSO/BGO well-type phoswich counters in a compound-eye configuration to achieve an extremely low background level of a few /spl times/ 10/sup -5/ counts s/sup -1/ cm/sup -2/ keV/sup -1/. The GSO scintillators installed in the BGO active shield wells are sensitive to 30-600 keV photons, while the 2-mm-thick silicon PIN diodes, placed in front of each GSO crystal, cover the 10-60 keV energy band with a spectral resolution of /spl sim/3.5-keV full-width at half-maximum. The design goals, of both low background and high energy resolution, in the hard X-ray bands were verified through the preflight calibration experiments.