The GLAST Burst Monitor
Abstract
The next large NASA mission in the field of gamma-ray astronomy, GLAST, is scheduled for launch in 2007. Aside from the main instrument LAT (Large-Area Telescope), a gamma-ray telescope for the energy range between 20 MeV and > 100 GeV, a secondary instrument, the GLAST burst monitor (GBM), is foreseen. With this monitor one of the key scientific objectives of the mission, the determination of the high-energy behaviour of gamma-ray bursts and transients can be ensured. Its task is to increase the detection rate of gamma-ray bursts for the LAT and to extend the energy range to lower energies (from ~10 keV to \~30 MeV). It will provide real-time burst locations over a wide FoV with sufficient accuracy to allow repointing the GLAST spacecraft. Time-resolved spectra of many bursts recorded with LAT and the burst monitor will allow the investigation of the relation between the keV and the MeV-GeV emission from GRBs over unprecedented seven decades of energy. This will help to advance our understanding of the mechanisms by which gamma-rays are generated in gamma-ray bursts.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0407144,
title = {The GLAST Burst Monitor},
author = {Andreas von Kienlin and Charles A. Meegan and Giselher G. Lichti and Narayana P. Bhat and Michael S. Briggs and Valerie Connaughton and Roland Diehl and Gerald J. Fishman and Jochen Greiner and Andrew S. Hoover and R. Marc Kippen and Chryssa Kouveliotou and William S. Paciesas and Robert D. Preece and Volker Schoenfelder and Helmut Steinle and Robert B. Wilson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0407144},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
8 pages, 7 figures, to appear in SPIE conference proceedings vol 5488, "UV-Gamma Ray Space Telescope Systems," Glasgow UK, 21-24 June 2004