Speaker
Toru Tamagawa
Description
We have fabricated a semi-flight-ready micro GEM-TPC for the X-ray polarimeter telescope onboard the NASA's Gravity and Extremely Magnetism Small Explorer (GEMS) mission. The use of GEM-TPC in space is very different technical challenge from the uses in celerator based experiments. We carefully tested various issues to ensure two-years lifetime of the detector in orbit, including aging of the GEM foils and outgassing from detector materials. The GEM-TPC has 120 micron-pitch readout strips and can image a very short track (typically 1 mm) of photoelectrons emitted by photoelectric absorption of X-ray in pure dimethyl ether (DME) gas. At the conference, we will present the design and properties of the GEM-TPC, which will be launched into space very soon, and a ompactly fabricated readout system with APV25 ASIC chips.
