The POLAR detector is a space based Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) polarimeter with a wide field of view, which covers almost half the sky. The instrument uses Compton scattering of gamma rays on a plastic scintillator hodoscope to measure the polarization of the incoming photons. The instrument has been successfully launched on board of the Chinese space laboratory Tiangong~2 on September 15, 2016. The construction of the instrument components is described in this article. Details are provided on problems encountered during the construction phase and their solutions. Initial performance of the instrument in orbit is as expected from ground tests and Monte Carlo simulation.
@article{arxiv.1709.07191,
title = {Design and construction of the POLAR detector},
author = {N. Produit and T. W. Bao and T. Batsch and T. Bernasconi and I. Britvich and F. Cadoux and I. Cernuda and J. Y. Chai and Y. W. Dong and N. Gauvin and W. Hajdas and M. Kole and M. N. Kong and R. Kramert and L. Li and J. T. Liu and X. Liu and R. Marcinkowski and S. Orsi and M. Pohl and D. Rapin and D. Rybka and A. Rutczynska and H. L. Shi and P. Socha and J. C. Sun and L. M. Song and J. Szabelski and I. Traseira and H. L. Xiao and R. J. Wang and X. Wen and B. B. Wu and L. Zhang and L. Y. Zhang and S. N. Zhang and Y. J. Zhang and A. Zwolinska},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.07191},
year = {2017}
}