Design and Calibration of the High Energy Particle Monitor onboard the Insight-HXMT

TL;DR

This paper details the design, calibration, and in-orbit performance of high energy particle monitors on Insight-HXMT, which detect charged particles in the South Atlantic Anomaly to trigger detector switches and map the region.

Contribution

It presents a stable, reliable HPM design with detailed ground calibration and simulation, and demonstrates its effective operation over two years in orbit.

Findings

HPMs successfully detect SAA particles and trigger alerts

Calibration and simulation ensure accurate energy response and temperature dependence

HPM data used for SAA region mapping

Abstract

Three high energy particle monitors (HPMs) employed onboard the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope Insight-HXMT) can detect the charged particles from South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) and hence provide the alert trigger for switch-on/off of the main detectors. Here a typical design of HPM with high stability and reliability is adopted by taking a plastic scintillator coupled with a small photomultiplier tube (PMT). The window threshold of HPM is designed as 1 MeV and 20 MeV for the incident electron and proton, respectively. Before the launch of Insight-HXMT, we performed in details the ground calibration of HPM. The measured energy response and its dependence on temperature are taken as essential input of Geant4 simulation for estimating the HPM count rate given with an incident particle energy spectrum. This serves as a guidance for choosing a reasonable working range of the PMT high voltage once the real SAA count rate is measured by HPM in orbit. So far the three HPMs have been working in orbit for more than two years. Apart from providing reliable alert trigger, the HPMs data are used as well to map the SAA region.