The removal method and generation mechanism of spikes in Insight-HXMT/HE telescope

TL;DR

This paper investigates the characteristics and origins of spikes in Insight-HXMT/HE telescope data, proposing effective removal methods and analyzing their generation mechanisms to improve data quality.

Contribution

It introduces two spike removal methods tailored for Insight-HXMT/HE data and studies the electronic design factors influencing spike generation.

Findings

Effective spike removal parameters identified for energy and power spectra.

Spikes are fake triggers caused by electronic signals.

Spike reduction can be achieved through electronic design improvements.

Abstract

Spikes are some obvious sharp increases that appear on the raw light curves of High Energy X-ray telescope(HE) onboard Insight-HXMT, which could have influences on the data products like energy and power spectra. They are considered to be fake triggers generated by large signals. In this paper, we study the characteristic of the spikes and propose two methods to remove spikes from the raw data. According to the different influences on energy and power spectra, the best parameters for removing the spikes is selected and used in the Insight-HXMT data analysis software. The generation mechanism of spikes is also studied using the backup HE detectors on ground and the spikes can be reduced by the electronic design.