The Double-Sided Silicon Strip Detector Tracker onboard the ComPair Balloon Flight

TL;DR

The paper discusses the development, calibration, and initial flight results of a double-sided silicon strip detector tracker designed for gamma-ray detection in the ComPair balloon instrument, part of the AMEGO mission concept.

Contribution

It introduces a novel silicon strip detector tracker for gamma-ray astronomy, demonstrating its development, testing, and successful deployment in a balloon flight.

Findings

Successful calibration of the DSSD Tracker

First balloon flight data collected in August 2023

Effective event reconstruction demonstrated

Abstract

The ComPair balloon instrument is a prototype of the All-sky Medium Energy Gamma-ray Observatory (AMEGO) mission concept. AMEGO aims to bridge the spectral gap in sensitivity that currently exists from $\sim$100 keV to $\sim$100 MeV by being sensitive to both Compton and pair-production events. This is made possible through the use of four subsystems working together to reconstruct events: a double-sided silicon strip detector (DSSD) Tracker, a virtual Frisch grid cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) Low Energy Calorimeter, a ceasium iodide (CsI) High Energy Calorimeter, and an anti-coincidence detector (ACD) to reject charged particle backgrounds. Composed of 10 layers of DSSDs, ComPair's Tracker is designed to measure the position of photons that Compton scatter in the silicon, as well as reconstruct the tracks of electrons and positrons from pair-production as they propagate through the detector. By using these positions, as well as the absorbed energies in the Tracker and 2 Calorimeters, the energy and direction of the incident photon can be determined. This proceeding will present the development, testing, and calibration of the ComPair DSSD Tracker and early results from its balloon flight in August 2023.