arXiv Astrophysics
arXiv Astrophysics
3 years ago

First demonstration of gamma-ray imaging using balloon-borne emulsion telescope.

Katsumi Ishiguro, Tatsuki Inoue, Hiroaki Kawahara, Shuichi Tawa, Shigeki Aoki, Keita Ozaki, Toshio Hara, Kimio Niwa, Mitsuhiro Nakamura, Atsushi Iyono, Emi Shibayama, Kyohei Yamada, Kaname Hamada, Misato Yabu, Atsumu Suzuki, Kunihiro Morishima, Satoru Takahashi, Motoaki Miyanishi, Osamu Sato, Saya Yamamoto, Misaki Morishita, Tetsuya Kosaka, Yurie Tateishi, Toshiyuki Nakano, Masahiro Komatsu, Koichi Kodama, Ryo Tanaka, Naoto Otsuka, Masahiro Yoshimoto, Fukashi Mizutani, Hiroki Rokujo, Akira Nishio, Ryosuke Komatani

We promote the precise gamma-ray observation project Gamma-Ray Astro-Imager with Nuclear Emulsion (GRAINE) using balloon-borne emulsion gamma-ray telescopes that realize high-angular-resolution, polarization-sensitive, and large-aperture-area observations in the 10 MeV--100 GeV energy region. Herein, we report the emulsion track-data analysis and the first demonstration of gamma-ray imaging via an emulsion telescope by using the flight data from the balloon experiment performed in 2015 (GRAINE 2015). The total 41-m$^2$ emulsion films are scanned by the latest read-out system for three months, and then the gamma-ray event selection is automatically processed. Millions of electron-pair events are accumulated from the balloon-borne emulsion chamber. The emulsion telescope significantly detects signals from a calibration source (gamma rays from an aluminum plate via cosmic-ray interactions) during the balloon observation and creates a gamma-ray image consistent with the source size and the expected angular resolution in the energy range of 100--300 MeV. The flight performances obtained in GRAINE 2015 prove that larger-area balloon-borne emulsion telescope experiments are feasible.

Publisher URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/1711.01544

DOI: arXiv:1711.01544v1

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

  • Download from Google Play
  • Download from App Store
  • Download from AppInChina

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.