English

Gamma-Ray Polarimetry

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics 2023-04-05 v1

Abstract

While the scientific potential of high-energy X-ray and gamma-ray polarimetry has long been recognized, measuring the polarization of high-energy photons is challenging. To date, there has been very few significant detections from an astrophysical source. However, recent technological developments raise the possibility that this may change in the not-too-distant future. Significant progress has been made in the development of Gamma-ray Burst (GRB) polarimeters and polarization sensitive Compton telescopes. A second-generation dedicated GRB polarimeter, POLAR-2, is under development for launch in 2024, and COSI a second-generation polarization sensitive Compton Telescope has been selected by NASA for launch in 2025. This chapter reviews basic concepts and experimental approaches of scattering polarimetry of hard X-rays to MeV {\gamma}-rays, and pair production polarimetry of higher-energy photons

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2205.02072,
  title  = {Gamma-Ray Polarimetry},
  author = {Denis Bernard and Tanmoy Chattopadhyay and Fabian Kislat and Nicolas Produit},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.02072},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

44 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-24T11:07:04.539Z