PULSAR: A Balloon-Borne Experiment to Detect Variable Low Energy gamma-Ray

摘要

The main goal of the balloon-borne PULSAR experiment is to observe gamma ray photons of variable sources and pulsars in the energy range 0.1-5.0 MeV. The geometrical arrangement of the telescope was designed according to detector sensitivity estimations for the pulsed radiation, which were made by empirical and analytical methods. From the obtained results it is expected to achieve a detection sensitivity of 2.7x10(-7) photons cm(-2)s(-1)KeV(-1) (0.1-0.5 MeV) and 4.5x10(-8) photons cm(-2) s(-1)KeV(-1) (1.0-5.0 MeV), for 5 hours integration time at 5 g cm(-2) atmospheric depth, with 3 sigma statistical significance. An on-board electronics, compatible with the available telemetry capacity, was developed that is able to process the data with a time resolution of approx. 4 milliseconds.