Design and construction of the POLAR detector

摘要

The POLAR detector is a space based Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) polarimeter with awide field of view, which covers almost half the sky. The instrument usesCompton scattering of gamma rays on a plastic scintillator hodoscope to measurethe polarization of the incoming photons. The instrument has been successfullylaunched on board of the Chinese space laboratory Tiangong~2 on September 15,2016. The construction of the instrument components is described in thisarticle. Details are provided on problems encountered during the constructionphase and their solutions. Initial performance of the instrument in orbit is asexpected from ground tests and Monte Carlo simulation.