Measurement of the position resolution of the Gas Pixel Detector

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the Gas Pixel Detector's imaging resolution using laboratory tests and simulations, confirming its potential for advanced X-ray spectral-polarimetry in future space missions.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed assessment of the Gas Pixel Detector's imaging capabilities through combined experimental and simulation approaches.

Findings

Confirmed the detector's high position resolution

Demonstrated suitability for imaging spectral-polarimetry

Validated performance for future X-ray missions

Abstract

The Gas Pixel Detector was designed and built as a focal plane instrument for X-ray polarimetry of celestial sources, the last unexplored subtopics of X-ray astronomy. It promises to perform detailed and sensitive measurements resolving extended sources and detecting polarization in faint sources in crowded fields at the focus of telescopes of good angular resolution. Its polarimetric and spectral capability were already studied in earlier works. Here we investigate for the first time, with both laboratory measurements and Monte Carlo simulations, its imaging properties to confirm its unique capability to carry out imaging spectral-polarimetry in future X-ray missions.