Modeling the in-orbit background of PolarLight

TL;DR

This paper models the in-orbit background of PolarLight, a CubeSat X-ray polarimeter, using Geant4 simulations to identify dominant background sources and assess their impact on measurements.

Contribution

It presents a detailed Geant4-based mass model of PolarLight to simulate and analyze in-orbit background sources, highlighting the dominant role of high energy electrons.

Findings

Background dominated by high energy electrons

Approximately 28% of background events mimic X-ray signals

Internal background rate estimated at 6 x 10^-3 counts/s/cm2 in 2-8 keV

Abstract

PolarLight is a gas pixel X-ray polarimeter mounted on a CubeSat, which was launched into a Sun-synchronous orbit in October 2018. We build a mass model of the whole CubeSat with the Geant4 toolkit to simulate the background induced by the cosmic X-ray background (CXB) and high energy charged particles in the orbit. The simulated energy spectra and morphologies of event images both suggest that the measured background with PolarLight is dominated by high energy electrons, with a minor contribution from protons and the CXB. The simulation reveals that, in the energy range of 2-8 keV, there are roughly 28% of the background events are caused by energy deposit from a secondary electron with an energy of a few keV, in a physical process identical to the detection of X-rays. Thus, this fraction of background cannot be discriminated from X-ray events. The background distribution is uneven on the detector plane, with an enhancement near the edges. The edge effect is because high energy electrons tend to produce long tracks, which are discarded by the readout electronics unless they have partial energy deposits near the edges. The internal background rate is expected to be around 6 x 10^-3 counts/s/cm2 in 2-8 keV if an effective particle discrimination algorithm can be applied. This indicates that the internal background should be negligible for future focusing X-ray polarimeters with a focal size in the order of mm.