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Soft proton flux on ATHENA focal plane and its impact on the magnetic diverter design

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Abstract

The experience gained with the current generation of X-ray telescopes like Chandra and XMM-Newton has shown that low energy “soft” protons can pose a severe threat to the possibility to exploit scientific data, reducing the available exposure times by up to 50% and introducing a poorly reproducible background component. These soft protons are present in orbits outside the radiation belts and enter the mirrors, being concentrated towards the focal plane instruments, losing energy along their path and finally depositing their remaining energy in the detectors. Their contribution to the residual background will be even higher for ATHENA with respect to previous missions, given the much higher collecting area of the mirrors, even if the instruments will likely suffer no significant radiation damage from this particles flux. As a consequence this soft proton flux shall be damped with the use of a magnetic diverter to avoid excess background loading on the WFI or X-IFU instruments. We present here a first complete evaluation of this background component for the two focal plane instruments of the ATHENA mission in absence of a magnetic diverter, and derive the requirements for such device to reduce the soft protons induced background below the level required to enable the mission science. We estimate the soft proton flux expected in L2 for the interplanetary component and for the component generated locally by acceleration processes in the magnetotail. We produce a proton response matrix for each of the two instruments of ATHENA focal plane, exploiting two independent Monte Carlo simulations to estimate the optics concentration efficiency, and Geant4 simulations to evaluate the energy loss inside the radiation filters and deposited in the detector. With this modular approach we derive the expected fluxes and spectra for the soft protons component of the background. Finally, we calculate the specifics of a magnetic diverter able to reduce such flux below the required level for both X-IFU and WFI.

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Notes

  1. ATHENA Radiation Environment Models and X-Ray Background Effects Simulators

  2. http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/heasarc/caldb/docs/memos/calgen92002/calgen92002.html

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Acknowledgements

GEOTAIL/EPIC data have been provided by the Applied Physics Laboratory at John Hopkins University, Laurel, MD, USA. The GEOTAIL data analysis was partly performed with the AMDA science analysis system provided by the Centre de Données de la Physique des Plasmas (CDPP http://cdpp.eu/) supported by CNRS, CNES, Observatoire de Paris and Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INAF-IAPS Roma, Via Fosso del Cavaliere 100, Rome, 00133, Italy

    Simone Lotti, Monica Laurenza, Gabriele Minervini, Tommaso Alberti, Claudio Macculi & Luigi Piro

  2. INAF-IASF Palermo, Via Ugo la Malfa 153, 90146, Palermo, Italy

    Teresa Mineo

  3. IRAP/CDPP Toulouse, 9, avenue du Colonel Roche, Toulouse, France

    Christian Jacquey

  4. INAF-OAS Bologna, Via Piero Gobetti, 101, 40129, Bologna, Italy

    Valentina Fioretti

  5. ESA/ESTEC and RHEA System, Keplerlaan 1, 2201, AZ, Noordwijk, Netherlands

    Giovanni Santin

  6. INAF-IASF Milano, Via E. Bassini 15, I-20133, Milano, Italy

    Silvano Molendi

  7. SWHARD srl, Via Greto di Cornigliano, 6, 16152, Genova, Italy

    Paolo Dondero & Alfonso Mantero

  8. Tomsk State University, Lenin Ave, 36, Tomsk, Russia

    Vladimir Ivanchencko

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  1. Simone Lotti
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  2. Teresa Mineo
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  3. Christian Jacquey
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  4. Monica Laurenza
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Simone Lotti.

Additional information

This work is supported by the ESA “AREMBES” Contract No 4000116655/16/NL/BW.

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Lotti, S., Mineo, T., Jacquey, C. et al. Soft proton flux on ATHENA focal plane and its impact on the magnetic diverter design. Exp Astron 45, 411–428 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-018-9599-9

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