We propose a future mission concept, the MeV Astrophysical Spectroscopic Surveyor (MASS), which is a large area Compton telescope using 3D position sensitive cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) detectors optimized for emission line detection. The payload consists of two layers of CZT detectors in a misaligned chessboard layout, with a total geometric area of 4096 cm2 for on-axis observations. The detectors can be operated at room-temperature with an energy resolution of 0.6\% at 0.662 MeV. The in-orbit background is estimated with a mass model. At energies around 1 MeV, a line sensitivity of about 10−5 photons cm−2 s−1 can be obtained with a 1 Ms observation. The main science objectives of MASS include nucleosynthesis in astrophysics and high energy astrophysics related to compact objects and transient sources. The payload CZT detectors weigh roughly 40 kg, suggesting that it can be integrated into a micro- or mini-satellite. We have constructed a pathfinder, named as MASS-Cube, to have a direct test of the technique with 4 detector units in space in the near future.
@article{arxiv.2312.11900,
title = {MeV Astrophysical Spectroscopic Surveyor (MASS): A Compton Telescope Mission Concept},
author = {Jiahuan Zhu and Xutao Zheng and Hua Feng and Ming Zeng and Chien-You Huang and Jr-Yue Hsiang and Hsiang-Kuang Chang and Hong Li and Hao Chang and Xiaofan Pan and Ge Ma and Qiong Wu and Yulan Li and Xuening Bai and Mingyu Ge and Long Ji and Jian Li and Yangping Shen and Wei Wang and Xilu Wang and Binbin Zhang and Jin Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.11900},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
accepted for publication in Experimental Astronomy