Improvement of the GAMMA-400 physical scheme for precision gamma-ray emission investigations

TL;DR

This paper discusses enhancements to the GAMMA-400 gamma-ray telescope's physical design, significantly improving its energy and angular resolution in the low-energy gamma-ray range for better dark matter and astrophysical studies.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel method to improve GAMMA-400's physical characteristics, especially in the low-energy gamma-ray range, surpassing previous space mission capabilities.

Findings

Angular resolution at 50 MeV improved to better than 5 degrees

Energy resolution at 100 GeV is approximately 1%

Method reduces dead matter to enhance low-energy performance

Abstract

The main goal for the GAMMA-400 gamma-ray telescope mission is to perform a sensitive search for signatures of dark matter particles in high-energy gamma-ray emission. Measurements will also concern the following scientific goals: detailed study of the Galactic center region, investigation of point and extended gamma-ray sources, studies of the energy spectra of Galactic and extragalactic diffuse emissions. To perform these measurements the GAMMA-400 gamma-ray telescope possesses unique physical characteristics for energy range from ~20 MeV to ~1000 GeV in comparison with previous and current space and ground-based experiments. The major advantage of the GAMMA-400 instrument is excellent angular and energy resolutions for gamma-rays above 10 GeV. The gamma-ray telescope angular and energy resolutions for the main aperture at 100-GeV gamma rays are ~0.01 deg and ~1%, respectively. The special goal is to improve physical characteristics in the low- energy range from ~20 MeV to 100 MeV. Minimizing the amount of dead matter in the telescope aperture allows us to obtain the angular and energy resolutions better in this range than in current space missions. The gamma-ray telescope angular resolution at 50-MeV gamma rays is better than 5 deg and energy resolution is ~10%. We report the method providing these results.