The CUbesat Solar Polarimeter (CUSP) project is a CubeSat mission orbiting the Earth aimed to measure the linear polarization of solar flares in the hard X-ray band by means of a Compton scattering polarimeter. CUSP will allow to study the magnetic reconnection and particle acceleration in the flaring magnetic structures of our star. CUSP is a project in the framework of the Alcor Program of the Italian Space Agency aimed to develop new CubeSat missions. CUSP undergoing the Phase B started in December 2024 that will last for 12 month. The Compton polarimeter of the CUSP payload performs coincidence measurements between plastic scintilaltors and GaGG(Ce) crystals to derive the polarization of X-rays. These sensors are readout by Multi Anode Photomultiplier Tubes (MAPMTs) and Avalanche Photodiodes (APDs) respectively. Both sensors need an HV power supply up to -1~kV (for the MAPMT) and +500~V (for the APD). We tested precision regulated High Voltage DC/DC Converters by HVM Technology Inc. with Sub-Miniature Case Size (0.85′′×0.85′′×0.60′′) of the SMHV series. These modules are compact and suited for CubeSat missions.
@article{arxiv.2508.00647,
title = {Study of the HV power supply modules for the CUbesat Solar Polarimeter (CUSP)},
author = {Alessandro Lacerenza and Alda Rubini and Andrea Alimenti and Sergio Fabiani and Ettore Del Monte and Riccardo Campana and Mauro Centrone and Enrico Costa and Nicolas De Angelis and Giovanni De Cesare and Sergio Di Cosimo and Giuseppe Di Persio and Abhay Kumar and Pasqualino Loffredo and Giovanni Lombardi and Gabriele Minervini and Fabio Muleri and Paolo Romano and Emanuele Scalise and Enrico Silva and Paolo Soffitta and Davide Albanesi and Ilaria Baffo and Daniele Brienza and Valerio Campamaggiore and Giovanni Cucinella and Andrea Curatolo and Giulia de Iulis and Andrea Del Re and Vito Di Bari and Simone Di Filippo and Immacolata Donnarumma and Pierluigi Fanelli and Nicolas Gagliardi and Paolo Leonetti and Matteo Merge and Dario Modenini and Andrea Negri and Daniele Pecorella and Massimo Perelli and Alice Ponti and Francesca Sbop and Paolo Tortora and Alessandro Turchi and Valerio Vagelli and Emanuele Zaccagnino and Alessandro Zambardi and Costantino Zazza},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.00647},
year = {2025}
}